While norovirus is nowhere near the killer that influenza is, several teams of researchers are nonetheless working on vaccines to prevent it. Globally, norovirus kills 200,000 people a year.
It’s difficult in part because the virus mutates, and in part because the virus lives in the gut and it’s hard to make vaccines that work there.
Drugmaker Takeda has a vaccine that’s being tested in people now. At least one study has shown that about 20 percent of people of European origin have a genetic mutation that protects them from common norovirus strains, something that might help in development of better vaccines.
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