Seeking advice from the HPU is recommended when two
or more cases of diarrhoea that are suspected to be infectious
occur within a few days in a care home.Our data
show that outbreaks are substantially under-reported.
Although participating care homes reported over 100 outbreaks
of diarrhoea during the study period via our survey,
we found that only 25 outbreaks of diarrhoea had been
reported to the HPU during the same period (for all Sussex
care homes). Given that 41% of care homes participated in
the study, we would expect the actual number of outbreaks
across Sussex care homes to be much higher.