It’s not a cure for cancer or heart disease or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, but for people who have suffered from norovirus, there is now a step in the right direction.
A vaccine for the sometimes-deadly disease — it’s always associated with but not restricted to cruise ships — has passed experimental tests at Baylor College of Medicine and been published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.
Because it’s still experimental, it will be years before the vaccine is available to the public. In other words, it’s early in the life of the vaccine. It’s a nasal spray designed to prevent one type of norovirus, and a placebo is also being tested.
For those of us who have sometimes made light of norovirus and compared it to the ‘flu (mea culpa, mea cupla), one little fact in the news of the vaccine caught our attention: More than 200,000 children around the world die of norovirus every year.
Ouch.
While cruise ships often get tarred with the norovirus label, the facts are that it can strike wherever large groups of people gather. Nursing homes. Schools. Hospitals. In fact, according to a study conducted by USA Today, American ports are likely to reach a “multi-year low” in norovirus cases in 2011. In 2001, there were 30…last year 14…this year 11, the 11th one on Oasis of the Seas earlier this month.
There were 65 people affected. The ship was sanitized and, after a delay, the ship left Port Everglades for the Western Caribbean.
One day, hopefully, there will only be a nasal spray to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody on cruises ships, or anywhere else.
The first step has been taken.
DAILY DEAL:
Celebrity Eclipse
7 nights
January 28, 2012
Miami (return): San Juan, Philipsburg, St. Maarten, Basseterre, St. Kitts
Inside $719
www.celebritycruises.com