Vomiting bug contained

NHS Shetland has confirmed that by now almost everybody affected by last week’s spread of the highly contagious winter vomiting bug in the North Mainland is now on their way to recovery.

The viral gastroenteritis outbreak also affected the Moorfield Hotel in Brae, where a number of guests working at the Shetland Gas Plant took ill and were advised to stay in their rooms.

A spokeswoman for hotel management firm BDL said on Monday: “All but one of these guests have recovered, with the one remaining guest quickly improving.”

NHS Shetland consultant for public health medicine Dr Susan Laidlaw said although there had been a few more cases over the weekend nearly all the people initially affected had now fully recovered.

So far there had been a “lot of viral diarrhoea and vomiting across the Shetland community this winter” and Laidlaw warned that this was likely to continue.

She used the opportunity to highlight the following NHS Inform webpage on managing and preventing gastroenteritis: https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/stomach-liver-and-gastrointestinal-tract/gastroenteritis#introduction 

The advice when affected by the vomiting bug is not to attend GP surgeries, as the bug can spread very easily to others, but to either call NHS 24 or local GP surgeries for help.