Systematic Review of Heterogeneity in Duration of Norovirus Infectiousness

Principal Investigator

Joseph Eisenberg

Co-Investigators

James Uber, Christine Moe

Additional Personnel

Jonathan Zelner, Meghan Milbrath

Funding Sources

Environmental Protection Agency

About this Project

Norovirus infections, common causes of epidemic gastroenteritis, are generally short and self-limiting, but some individuals can asymptomatically shed viral particles for a very long time. This heterogeneity in infectiousness duration can affect epidemiological patterns and outbreak risk.

We reviewed the existing literature for human norovirus shedding duration data, which we used to develop realistic infectious period distributions. The resulting distributions were used to inform models of norovirus disease transmission.