Are you still contagious 4/5 days after a sickness bug?

[JKCR2017]

Basically DD & DS were sick early last week. It wasn’t a full blown bug. Literally both were sick twice and that was that. No diarrhoea luckily and both bounced really quickly.

On Saturday, we went to my mother in laws birthday party. We would of avoided if it hadn’t been 4-5 days but thought it would of been okay. Schools always say keep them off for 48 hours (which I always do).

Anyway a few people from the party have come down with some kind of bug type thing. Could they have caught it from my children? Being made to feel guilty for taking them but they had been fine for a few days and the party was outside. The people that have caught it didn’t really come into close contact with DC.

I always good hygiene. They were washing their hands after using the loo and before eating as they always do.

I think it can be up to a fortnight which is probably why d&vs are so rife!

I'd be more inclined to wonder about food/drinks provided at the party, was it a BBQ?

48 hours after the last vomit/diarrhoea (that's the rule for NHS employees so should be fine for other situations).

That sounds like Noro because of the quick recovery. Probably sudden onset, too.

The big contagion risk direct from a person is aerosolised (sp?) particles linked to vomit. Once vomiting has stopped then the risk of sharing the bug goes down a lot. But tiny amount of virus can be shed afterwards, more and longer by children. You can't quarantine or treat your healthy child like they are plague-bearing for weeks. It was circulating where you live it's probably circulating in the lives of your contacts' contacts, too. Thing is, noro persists in the environment for ages (offhand I want to say on surfaces for weeks), and something like 40% of all cases are food borne so super hard to trace, anyway.