Winter hasn't yet officially begun, but temperatures across the UK have already started to plummet, making it feel like autumn is well and truly over.The cold weather tends to come alongside a surge in colds and flu, but this year Brits are being warned to also be wary of norovirus, often referred to as the 'winter vomiting bug'.
Norovirus is a stomach bug which is extremely contagious. It tends to trigger sudden diarrhoea and projectile vomiting, and is responsible for around 12,000 hospital admissions in the UK every year.
Cases of norovirus tend to rise during the winter months, but this year a new variant has been identified in the UK, leading an even bigger surge in diagnoses.
The 'Kawasaki bug' was first spotted in Kawasaki, Japan in 2014, and has rapidly become a dominant virus across the UK in recent times, accounting for 70 per cent of all norovirus cases.