People should not cancel Christmas celebrations for fear of the winter vomiting bug, and cases are likely to drop next week, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said yesterday.
Tens of thousands of people are still likely to fall ill with norovirus because the infection season started much earlier than usual.
Almost a million people are thought to have caught the bug since the summer, with the number of cases 83 per cent higher than at this time last year.
But John Harris, a specialist in norovirus at the HPA, said people should not let concern about the illness put them off visiting relatives this Christmas.
“It’s not a pleasant illness, but would you avoid going to your family if you knew that one of them