February 20, 2018
By Sean Overpeck (CFE)
**A full article and index glossary of restaurants, wines, recipes and travel for
Wine Dine and Play are in the pages section above, or by following these links:
Food Service Staff Need To Up There Game
The Pyeongchang, South Korean 2018 winter games started on February 9, but four days before the opening ceremony 32 workers were being treated for norovirus and were placed in quarantine, including 21 from the Civil Security Staff along with three foreigners according to the initial reports from the Associated Press. Five days after those first cases appeared, The Horeb Youth Center had 108 more cases with an additional 77 cases in the coastal city of Gangneung plus 59 in the mountain villages around Pyeongchang, bringing the total number to 158 cases. The main group of affected workers was security staff, resulting in the South Korean Government mobilizing the ROK Army to take the workers place as the Olympic organizers removed 1,200 personnel from their posts and quarantined them in their rooms after several dozens more tested positive.
 |
| Picture courtesy of Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images |
By February 15, the number increased to 244 according to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and had spread to two Swiss athletes, and that both have been treated by the Swiss team’s doctors and no longer show symptoms of the highly contagious viral stomach flu. There's no current treatment for norovirus, but most people recover in one to three days. According to a statement from the Swiss delegation, the two cases are isolated. Both athletes were staying in Bokwang, not in the Olympic Village, and have had minimal contact with other athletes. Six months before the start of these games at the world athletics championships in London, 30 athletes from Germany to Botswana came down with norovirus, and several of those infected had to withdraw from their events, so Pyeongchang is far from being an isolated event for this outbreak.
After the February 15 report was released, American skier Mikaela Shiffrin vomited before her slalom run and said between runs that she might have a virus. At first, it was reported by the Korean news service Yonhap that the source of the norovirus was unknown, but investigators later traced part of the outbreak to contaminated water used in food preparation at the Horeb Youth Center. Christophe Dubi, the IOC's executive director for the Olympic Games, told reporters they are taking no risks to contain the outbreak and prevent it from spreading to more athletes or spectators. According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia some 685 million cases of norovirus per year are reported with 1.1 million in Great Britain alone killing 50,000 + people worldwide.
Working in the food service for the past twenty years, when I first read about this outbreak, I included it in the morning training meetings with the food service staff. Most are third-country nationals from India, Nepal, and the Philippines. We take issues like this very seriously, as we don't want to lose our jobs by making our clients sick. I had recently given them a week-long refresher training class on the second chapter of the ServSafe book covering the many forms of contamination and foodborne illnesses. So with the issues at the games, and the recent E. coli romaine lettuce outbreak in California and Canada, it was a hot topic for discussion and review. For example, in the United States alone, there are 48 million cases of foodborne illness annually (1 in 6 Americans) each year. These illnesses result in 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.
 |
| The norovirus |
There are four ways food can become contaminated. They are biological, chemical, physical, and deliberate contaminations. Chemical contamination is caused by cleaning products, and pesticides getting mixed with food or having the food cooked in copper and zink pots. Physical contamination covers things like bugs, human hair, metal shards from a can, band-aids, fingernails and much more. Deliberate contamination is spread by terrorists, disgruntled former employees, or restaurant competitors. Under biological contamination where norovirus comes into play, there are four known biological pathogens from bacterial, parasite, fungi, and the dreaded virus. According to the FDA, CDC, and scientists at USAMRID, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, there are over forty types of biological contaminants out there that can spread to humans through food, and six have been singled out as highly contagious. Norovirus is one of these six. The others are Shigella, salmonella typhi, salmonella nontyphoidal, E. coli, and Hepatitis A.
What Is Norovirus, And How Did It Break Out at the Winter Olympics?
Norovirus is in a group of related viruses in the Caliciviridae family. Its spread through ingestion in the small intestine before being expelled in feces. Norovirus can be found in an infected person's feces even before they start feeling sick and two weeks or more after they feel better. Most norovirus outbreaks happen in food service settings according to the CDC. Like Hepatitis A, norovirus is commonly linked to ready-to-eat-food. Food workers who touch foods with their bare hands before serving are frequently the source. Also, any foods that are served raw or are handled after being cooked without the food service worker wearing gloves can become contaminated.
Causes
Methods of transmission include:
• Eating contaminated food
• Drinking contaminated water
• Touching your hand to your mouth after your hand has been in contact with a contaminated surface or
object
object
• Being in close contact with a person who has a norovirus infection
One main cause is not washing or not properly washing your hands after using the restroom, then touching the food with feces that may be on your fingers. The second most common is through a sewage pipe rupture which was the case when 529 people became sick with norovirus in 2009 after eating at Chef Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck which was #3 on the worlds top 100 restaurants of the world list. Also in 2013 sixty-three diners at Noma by Chef René Redzepi who owned the #1 restaurant in the world were infected by norovirus. Both outbreaks were linked to mussels that had been nesting in an area near a broken sewage pipe. According to the CDC, norovirus causes inflammation of the stomach, the intestines or both. A person usually develops symptoms 12 to 48 hours after being exposed.
Signs and symptoms of norovirus infection include:
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Abdominal pain or cramps
• Watery or loose diarrhea
• Malaise
• Low-grade fever
• Muscle pain
You may continue to shed virus in your feces for up to two weeks after recovery. Seek medical attention if you develop diarrhea that doesn't go away within several days. Also call your doctor if you experience severe vomiting, bloody stools, abdominal pain or dehydration.
 |
| Graph courtesy of Food Safety Magazine |
Risk factors for becoming infected with norovirus include:
• Eating in a place where food is handled with unsanitary procedures
• Attending preschool or a child care center
• Living in close quarters, such as in nursing homes
• Staying in hotels, resorts, cruise ships or other destinations with many people in close quarters
• Having contact with someone who has norovirus infection
Prevention
Norovirus infection is highly contagious, and anyone can become infected more than once. To help prevent its spread:
• Wash your hands thoroughly, especially after using the toilet or changing a diaper.
• Avoid contaminated food and water, including food that may have been prepared by someone who was
sick.
sick.
• Wash fruits and vegetables before eating.
• Cook seafood thoroughly.
• Dispose of vomit and fecal matter carefully, to avoid spreading norovirus by air. Soak up material with
disposable towels, using minimal agitation, and place them in plastic disposal bags.
disposable towels, using minimal agitation, and place them in plastic disposal bags.
• Disinfect virus-contaminated areas with a chlorine bleach solution. Wear gloves.
• Stay home from work, especially if your job involves handling food. You may be contagious as long as
three days after your symptoms end. Children should stay home from school or childcare.
three days after your symptoms end. Children should stay home from school or childcare.
• Avoid traveling until signs and symptoms have ended.
In the end, if you are in food service no matter what area of the world you work, then wash your hands.
Follow the safety guidelines for food preparation. Wash fruits and vegetables correctly, keep foods at
the proper cooling and heated temperatures. If you're going to be in the news, then make it for a good news
 |
| The proper hand wash method - picture from ServSafe |
Follow the safety guidelines for food preparation. Wash fruits and vegetables correctly, keep foods at
the proper cooling and heated temperatures. If you're going to be in the news, then make it for a good news
story, not a norovirus story. If you don’t want to do the right thing, then don’t work in an area that can affect
peoples health.
 |
| Picture courtesy of ServSafe |
Who is John Galt?
TTFN
