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'Deep clean' planned for infected hospital wards
By KIM THOMAS - The Press | Thursday, 18 October 2007
Wards at Christchurch's Princess Margaret Hospital will get a "deep clean" by a team of mask-wearing experts as they try to remove all traces of a norovirus outbreak.
Two wards at the hospital and one at Burwood Hospital remain closed after an outbreak of the gastroenteritis virus that has hit Christchurch in the past few weeks.
It is hoped the two Princess Margaret wards will reopen by the end of the week.
A total of seven Christchurch wards have been closed over the past few weeks and scores of Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) patients and staff incapacitated by the virus.
The board's clinical director for older persons' health, Jeff Kirwan, said cleaning staff would clean every centimetre of the Princess Margaret wards that were still affected. The work would involve drycleaning all curtains, washing all bedding and disinfecting every surface on the ward.
Kirwan said nine patients and five staff were still infected with suspected norovirus, including a patient aged over 90 who had been in a fragile condition because of contracting the virus.
Otago University associate professor of microbiology Vernon Ward said he was uncertain whether anyone had died through contracting norovirus, but it was suspected in a few cases.
The virus was common and easily spread, he said.
Once the virus got into the body it multiplied and caused intense vomiting and sometimes diarrhoea, Ward said.
Little is known about norovirus despite it being common, with an estimated 53,000 cases in New Zealand every year.
Ward said that there was little known about the virus because it was not able to be created in a laboratory and not able to be studied.
Ward said that he and his team at Otago University had submitted a proposal to the Health Research Council for funds to study similar viruses in the hope they would provide clues to a cure.
By KIM THOMAS - The Press | Thursday, 18 October 2007
Wards at Christchurch's Princess Margaret Hospital will get a "deep clean" by a team of mask-wearing experts as they try to remove all traces of a norovirus outbreak.
Two wards at the hospital and one at Burwood Hospital remain closed after an outbreak of the gastroenteritis virus that has hit Christchurch in the past few weeks.
It is hoped the two Princess Margaret wards will reopen by the end of the week.
A total of seven Christchurch wards have been closed over the past few weeks and scores of Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) patients and staff incapacitated by the virus.
The board's clinical director for older persons' health, Jeff Kirwan, said cleaning staff would clean every centimetre of the Princess Margaret wards that were still affected. The work would involve drycleaning all curtains, washing all bedding and disinfecting every surface on the ward.
Kirwan said nine patients and five staff were still infected with suspected norovirus, including a patient aged over 90 who had been in a fragile condition because of contracting the virus.
Otago University associate professor of microbiology Vernon Ward said he was uncertain whether anyone had died through contracting norovirus, but it was suspected in a few cases.
The virus was common and easily spread, he said.
Once the virus got into the body it multiplied and caused intense vomiting and sometimes diarrhoea, Ward said.
Little is known about norovirus despite it being common, with an estimated 53,000 cases in New Zealand every year.
Ward said that there was little known about the virus because it was not able to be created in a laboratory and not able to be studied.
Ward said that he and his team at Otago University had submitted a proposal to the Health Research Council for funds to study similar viruses in the hope they would provide clues to a cure.
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