The winter vomiting bug has been identified as the probable cause of illness of about 15 passengers on a flight from the Canary Islands to Cork at the weekend.
The Health Service Executive was alerted to the fact that a number of passengers were acutely ill on the flight before it arrived from Tenerife at 10.30 pm on Saturday night.
Because the emergency departments at hospitals in Cork city were already very busy doctors travelled to the airport to assess the situation. Passengers remained on the plane for an hour while the 15 holidaymakers who complained of feeling unwell were assessed. Ten decided themselves not to go to hospital even though they were invited to do so. They were sent home with appropriate advice. The other five were sent to Cork University Hospital and the South Infirmary Victoria Hospital. They have since been discharged.
Dr Chris Luke, an emergency medicine consultant who saw the patients at the airport, said their sickness had been compounded by turbulence on the flight.
While initially it was thought the passengers might have “airport food poisoning or even airline food poisoning” it later became clear this was not the case, he said.
"It transpired with investigation that probably most people were ill before they went to the airport (in Tenerife) and there seems to have been a bit of a norovirus or a winter vomiting virus going around in Tenerife because a lot of them were discussing or describing how other members of their parties or families had had medical attention in Tenerife before returning home so there seems to have been quite a deal of sickness in Tenerife," he told the Marian Finucane programme on RTÉ Radio 1 today.
Several hospitals have curtailed visiting in recent days due to outbreaks of the winter vomiting bug. On Friday Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital banned all visiting to wards as part of its efforts to contain an outbreak of the bug.