Risk Assessment of Norovirus Transmission in Food Establishments

The Risk Assessment of Norovirus Transmission in Food Establishments: Evaluating the Impact of Intervention Strategies and Food Employee Behavior (Duret et al. 2017) evaluates the dynamics of norovirus transmission from ill or infected food employees in food establishments (restaurant setting) to ready-to-eat food and consumers during food preparation and also evaluates the impact of prevention strategies. A discrete event model was developed to study norovirus transmission from the soiled hands of ill or infected food employees and the impact of prevention strategies and their compliance on the prevalence of contaminated servings and the number of resulting infected customers.

The Evaluation of the Impact of Compliance with Mitigation Strategies and Frequency of Restaurant Surface Cleaning and Sanitizing on Control of Norovirus Transmission from Ill Food Employees Using an Existing Quantitative Risk Assessment Model (Fanaselle et al. 2022) uses the previously published FDA quantitative risk assessment model in Duret et al. 2017, to evaluate more than 60 scenarios examining the impact of implementation and compliance with recommendations in the FDA Food Code for: restaurant surface cleaning and sanitizing, hand hygiene and employee health.

The objectives of this risk assessment were to:

Evaluate the dynamics of norovirus transmission from ill or infected food employees to ready-to-eat food and consumers.
Evaluate the impact of prevention strategies and their level of compliance on the prevalence of contaminated food servings and the number resulting infected consumers.
Provide a basis for evaluation of potential changes regarding Employee Health for the 2017 FDA Food Code.

For more information on FDA Food Code recommended intervention strategies for preventing norovirus, see Retail Food Protection.