Last winter's norovirus season was ugly enough that it produced a year of headlines about a stomach bug tearing through cruise ships, nursing homes and school cafeterias. This season, the same surveillance system counted fewer than half as many outbreaks.
Between August 1, 2025 and May 7, 2026, state health departments participating in CDC's NoroSTAT network reported 1,194 norovirus outbreaks. In the same window a year earlier, those states reported 2,534.