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May 11, 2008 6:17 pm US/Mountain
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At Least 50 Parishioners Get Norovirus At Church
AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) ―
Services at a local church went on as planned Sunday morning after at least 50 members caught the norovirus.
Leaders from the Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Aurora think the virus spread at a funeral earlier this week for its associate pastor, Fr. Malachy McBride.
"The seating capacity for the church is 1,500 and last week for the vigil and the funeral we had it practically full," Fr. Marty Lally said. "So there were a lot of people here and there was a lot of handshaking and communication that way."
The next day, the church was flooded with calls from employees and parishioners who were all sick with the same thing.
"I myself had it and I'm fine today, so I was down for a couple of days, but I'm feeling fine now," Lally said.
"There were about 50 people and two women wound up in the hospital," parishioner Bernadine Zagarella said. "At first they thought it was food poisoning."
But food wasn't the culprit. The Tri-County Health Department was called to the church to investigate.
"They told us about a norovirus that is spreading all over the metropolitan area," Lally said. "Apparently it's more widespread than we knew."
Norovirus is spread by person to person contact. With so many people touching and using the same worship materials, even the sanctuary could not keep out the virus. So at mass, the church let everyone know what was going on.
"Per recommendation from the Tri-County Health Department, our maintenance staff has cleaned the entire building with bleach wash," a parishioner announced.
Some church-goers went a step further and brought their own protection.
Symptoms of norovirus include vomiting, diarrhea, weakness and inability to eat. To help avoid contamination, wash hands thoroughly and more frequently.
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