| PVH Staff Recovers from Illness
Most of the managers and staff at Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln who had suddenly fallen ill during the third week of April have recovered and are back at work. Last week, more than 20 of the employees became violently ill after the group had attended a conference at an event center outside of the hospital. “We knew we needed to report it to state health officials,” says PVH Spokesperson Allison Bankston. “So many of us became sick so quickly, and we realized that all the sick individuals had been at the same meetings on April 14th and 15th which were held at an event center in Lincoln, off hospital grounds.”
More than 3 dozen PVH employees were at the 2-day training on improving customer service. The day after the training, more than 20 staff members—including more than half of the hospital’s management—had called in sick or left work early to recover from the illness, and at least one staff member required treatment in the PVH Emergency Department. Most of the ill staff members were back to work on Thursday, but a few did not return to work until Friday, April 18th.
Bankston says the other staff members who had worked in the hospital during those two days, instead of attending the conference, did not fall ill, and patient care was not affected. “This was a violent experience for many of us with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea, headache, and stomach cramps. At first we didn’t know what we were dealing with, so we brought in the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure we knew how to treat those who were affected.” Several staff members who did fall ill have unfortunately seen the sickness pass to family members.
Test results from the Maine CDC show the presence of Norovirus, also sometimes called the Norwalk virus. These are the same sort of viruses that have been known to spread through cruise ships in a short period of time. The CDC says Noroviruses are highly contagious and are spread mostly through person-to-person transfer of saliva and through the consumption of food or water contaminated by fecal matter. There is no evidence of Noroviruses being transferred through the respiratory system.
Geoff Beckett from the Maine CDC says we may never know exactly how the outbreak started and how it progressed to so many people. For more details on the state investigation, please contact Beckett at 287-2770.
For information on this and other news from PVH,
contact Allison Bankston at 207-794-7124 or abankston@pvhme.org
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