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Although norovirus is usually believed to cause relatively benign, self-limited illness, norovirus outbreaks in nursing homes could have more-serious implications. To investigate this possibility, investigators at the CDC and at public health departments in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania assessed hospitalization and mortality rates during nursing home norovirus outbreaks. They used data from the CDC's National Outbreak Reporting System to identify norovirus outbreaks and data from the Medicare Minimum Dataset to determine hospitalizations and deaths.
From 2009 through 2010, 308 nursing homes in the three states reported at least one norovirus outbreak (total, 407 outbreaks, of which 293 were microbiologically confirmed). Seasonally adju…