For our analysis, we had a dataset considerably larger than that used in the study by Lopman et al. A major difference with our data is the finding that, in the majority of outbreaks, wards were closed within 3 days.
"A good next step would be to see whether the vaccine generates enough of an immune response to provide protection in elderly patients," he adds, noting that the vast majority of outbreaks occur in long-term care facilities.
The great majority of outbreaks were detected during winter month surveys (n = 10 surveys), with the remaining three outbreaks detected during spring surveys.
This would be the available time frame for the development of future vaccine if such capacity becomes available for NoV. We demonstrated clearly that a single novel variant of NoV GII.4 caused the majority of outbreaks in four epidemic years in this study, similar to other reports with variable periods of observation from different continents [17], [27], [32] [35].
We predicted that if species like whooper swans, which are known to be highly susceptible to lethal infection, contracted H5N1 directly from poultry, then a majority of outbreaks involving such species should have been detected at times and in habitat types where their potential for exposure to poultry is highest.
Whereas the majority of outbreak-associated isolates (human clinical and food isolates) had an indistinguishable AscI PFGE pattern, one clinical isolate from Ontario and several isolates from the affected food production facility exhibited an AscI PFGE pattern that differed by a single restriction enzyme fragment compared to the primary outbreak strain.
The majority of outbreaks (57%) fell in the 0 to 10 day lag category.
The majority of outbreaks studied in Europe and North America were controlled within a few generations if detected early.
In the majority of outbreaks BRSV was the only virus detected.
Fortunately, the majority of outbreaks remain localized, and the global spread of a truly novel pathogen is rare.
