Friday, November 05, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NOROVIRUS OUTBREAK: Visitors leave LV with virus

Some who were infected might have become ill after going home

At least when it comes to norovirus, what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas.

"There is no way with this kind of sickness, that it's going to stay here," said the Clark County Health District's Brian Labus.

Labus, the district's senior epidemiologist, said Thursday a total of 1,252 employees and guests of the Flamingo Las Vegas have suffered symptoms of the vomit and diarrhea-inducing virus.

Health officials said airlines and other transportation carriers are being warned about the outbreak in Las Vegas.

With the Centers for Disease Control reporting that the incubation period for the ailment is usually 24 to 48 hours, out-of-town visitors might have gotten ill after returning home.

Robert Stewart, a spokesman for Caesars Entertainment, which owns the Flamingo, welcomed statistics from the health district Thursday that showed new reports of the virus down to fewer than 100 a week from a high of more than 500 a week during late October.

"It looks like our efforts are taking hold," he said of the resort's cleanup efforts.

Clark County health officials said calls have come in to the health district from across the nation from people suspecting they acquired the illness in Las Vegas, but authorities have not tracked the calls by state.

People from Oregon, Washington, Ohio, North Carolina and New York have complained to the Review-Journal that they caught the virus in Las Vegas. All maintain they should have been told by Flamingo officials that a norovirus outbreak was present. They said they never saw the two dozen 22-inch-by-28-inch signs that were on walls inside the hotel.

A letter had been placed in rooms, Stewart said, but some guests say they never saw that either.

Stewart said front desk personnel and the hotel's call center have not informed people of the virus outbreak "because so few people have been affected."

"You have to remember we have 3,500 rooms," he said.

Dorothy Lamboy of Long Island, N.Y., said her 75-year old father was hospitalized for four days at Desert Springs Hospital and is now recuperating at his North Carolina home from an infection caused by vomit going into his lungs.

Joanne Schrembeck from the Cleveland area worries that she might have passed the illness along to people who shared her plane trip back to the Cleveland area. She said she suffered with the virus for two days in Las Vegas, then boarded a non-top flight home on Oct. 24. Forty-five minutes later, as she sat in her seat, she vomited and experienced diarrhea.

Because the virus is so contagious, Clark County health authorities have been in contact with airlines and other transportation carriers.

"We have let them know that we have an outbreak and that they have to do deep chemical cleaning if anyone gets sick," said Dave Tonelli, a health district spokesman. "This is not the kind of thing where you slop around a little cleaning fluid and think you've done the job."

Shuttle bus companies in Las Vegas have been advised to use special cleaning solvents should someone become sick during a ride.

Noroviruses are transmitted primarily through consumption of contaminated food or by direct person-to-person spread. Federal health officials said the norovirus accounts for more than two-thirds of the estimated cases of food-borne illnesses in the United States each year. Infected food handlers are usually the cause of the contamination.

Virus generally passes through the system in about 72 hours.

Though Stewart was heartened by the declining numbers of reported norovirus cases, he was concerned Thursday by a report from an employee that suggested more employees had contracted the virus than first thought.

Initially, Stewart estimated about 180 employees had the virus.

If Flamingo employees are found to have the virus, they get six days off with pay, he said.

Pablo DeHoyos, a spokesman for the Culinary union, said no Flamingo workers have complained to the union about their treatment from Caesars.

Dr. Donald Kwalick, Clark County's chief health officer, praised hotel management for alerting the health district to the outbreak on Oct. 20.

"Health district and Flamingo Las Vegas staff are continuing to work together to mitigate the outbreak," Kwalick said. "Heightened sanitation practices have been implemented and staff is working to quickly identify any ill employees so they may be excused from work until well."

Tonelli said the district cannot tell hotel officials how to inform guests or potential guests about the virus. "That's up to them," he said.

No one knows how the virus reached Las Vegas, Tonelli said.

"It's no different than colds or flu," he said. "We're not the source of all colds or flu. But we have a lot of visitors congregating in one place and then it spreads quickly."