Outbreaks of Norovirus and Acute Gastroenteritis Associated with British Columbia Oysters, 2016–2017

Occurrence of Human Enteric Viruses in Water Sources and Shellfish: A Focus on Africa

“…The consumption of shellfish harvested from faecally contaminated waters is directly associated with outbreaks of viral gastroenteritis (reviewed in Bellou et al, 2013). Such outbreaks occur on a regular basis worldwide (Le Guyader et al 2008;Westrell et al 2010;Iritani et al 2014;Lunestad et al 2016;Woods et al 2016;Meghnath et al 2019) with potentially significant associated economic costs (Rheingans et al 2009;Navas et al 2015;Bartsch et al 2016;Papadopoulos et al 2019). Among the enteric viruses, NoV and HAV represent the majority of viral illnesses (Iizuka et al 2010;Pepe et al 2012;Fusco et al 2013Fusco et al , 2019La Bella et al 2017), although other viruses like HEV, HAstV, RV, SaV and AiV impact shellfisheries with symptoms that are more or less similar to those caused by NoVs (Pina et al 1998;Le Guyader et al 2008;Nakagawa-Okamoto et al 2009;Iritani et al 2014;La Bella et al 2017;La Rosa et al 2018).…”

“…For example, these viruses have been reported in bivalve shellfish and environmental water sources in North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt) (Benabbes et al 2013b;Zormati et al 2018;Shaheen and Elmahdy 2019) as well as in several Sub-Saharan countries including Chad (Guerrero-Latorre et al 2011), Nigeria (Adeniji and Faleye 2014), Ghana (Lutterodt et al 2018), Côte d'Ivoire (Momou et al 2017), Benin (Verheyen et al 2009), Kenya (Kiulia et al 2014), Uganda (Katukiza et al 2013b), Tanzania (Mattioli et al 2014), Mozambique (Nenonen et al 2006) and South Africa (Chigor et al 2014;Onosi et al 2020). Although the role of enteric viruses in food-and waterborne disease transmission has been extensively reviewed for the developed world (Lipp and Rose 1997;Potasman et al 2002;Sinclair et al 2009;Westrell et al 2010;Bellou et al 2013;Romalde et al 2017;Meghnath et al 2019) and Egypt (Aboubakr and Goyal 2019), to our knowledge, a review of the African continent where people are most at risk from exposure to these viruses is not available. Here, we present an overview of enteric viruses and then review what is known about bivalve shellfish and sewage-contaminated water sources as possible vehicles for transmission in African countries, with a view to highlighting the importance of further studies investigating the true prevalence, molecular epidemiology and circulation of these important human pathogens on the continent.…”

Full-genome sequences of GII.13[P21] recombinant norovirus strains from an outbreak in Changsha, China

“…Noroviruses are a major causative agent of acute gastroenteritis, with high prevalence across the globe [1]. Norovirus outbreaks in public spaces, such as kindergartens and primary or secondary schools, are generally associated with low hygiene levels and contaminated food or water [2][3][4]. Noroviruses belong to the family Caliciviridae and have three open reading frames (ORFs) in their genome.…”

“…The GII. 4[P4] genotype has been reported in many countries and is the prevalent strain in most outbreaks and human infections [9][10][11]. Previous reports have shown that GII.…”

“…The emerging virus can replace the old ones and cause new infections and outbreaks every two to four years, as has been observed with GII. 4 [20][21][22][23]. Although those genotypes have not caused severe outbreaks, studying these strains has helped us to obtain more information on the genetic diversity and gene constellation of noroviruses.…”