Quantifying the roles of vomiting, diarrhea, and residents vs. staff in norovirus transmission in U.S. nursing home outbreaks.

ABSTRACT: The role of individual case characteristics, such as symptoms or demographics, in norovirus transmissibility is poorly understood. Six nursing home norovirus outbreaks occurring in South Carolina, U.S. from 2014 to 2016 were examined. We aimed to quantify the contribution of symptoms and other case characteristics in norovirus transmission using the reproduction number (REi) as an estimate of individual case infectivity and to examine how transmission changes over the course of an outbreak. Individual estimates of REi were calculated using a maximum likelihood procedure to infer the average number of secondary cases generated by each case. The associations between case characteristics and REi were estimated using a weighted multivariate mixed linear model. Outbreaks began with one to three

SUBMITTER: Adams C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7135310 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature