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At least 37 people got sick on a popular Hawaii hiking trail last week, and while 4 people were lab-confirmed to have norovirus, the original source remains unknown. Noro spreads easily through contaminated food, water, or surfaces, like the communal composting toilets that are on this particular Hawaiian trail. Hand sanitizer doesn’t work to kill norovirus, and access to soap and water for hand washing on the trail is limited. It only takes a tiny amount of the virus to make others sick, and since it’s highly contagious, just one person’s illness can cause an outbreak among a group that is hiking together or using shared bathroom facilities, despite good ventilation in the great outdoors.
Source: NYT
At-home COVID tests still work but have to be used at the right time. Nothing about the actual virus has changed, but because our immune responses are getting quicker, our symptoms are starting sooner. This is a good thing in terms of not getting severely sick, but it means that we might have symptoms for three or four days before actually having enough viral particles in our nose to test positive on an at-home test. If you have symptoms but test negative in the first few days of your illness, try waiting a day and taking another test on day three or four; if your test does show that dreaded second line, you definitely have COVID. While false negatives are common, especially in the first few days of symptoms, positive tests are much more accurate, so if you’re sick and you test positive, you can be very sure that the results are legit. One more thing to consider: if your tests are expired, they may work and may not. There’s some evidence that they work well far beyond their expiration dates, but if you don’t see a control line or the line is distorted, you may want to try another that’s still within its shelf life.
Source: TIME