Nearly 90 people including patients and staff are affected

Relatives have been asked not to visit and the Canterbury hospital has brought in extra staff in a bid to control the outbreak of the Norovirus bug.

Seven wards have been affected, with 56 patients and 33 members of staff now suffering from the illness.

Dr Mati Chandrakumar, Kent and Medway health protection agency director, said deep cleaning was under way.

'Mild illness'

"It tends to spread to other people because when they do have vomiting you can get droplet air transmission and therefore other people can be affected," he said.

"We are trying to restrict movement, increase cleaning and confine it to the wards."

Debbie Weston, infection control advisor at the hospital, said the illness could last from 24 hours to up to 60 hours, but that patients tended to recover quickly.

"This is a fairly mild illness but it can affect large numbers of patients and staff.

"It is a viral condition that causes diarrhoea and vomiting and is particularly common during the winter months.

Deep cleaning

"It affects hospitals, schools, colleges, there are outbreaks in hotels and cruise ships, and because of the close proximity of people in hospital in terms of patients and staff, it can very quickly spread.

"Seven wards have been affected and we have had staff affected but they are now recovering."

Ms Weston added that deep cleaning was required after an outbreak of the bug.

"Wards are cleaned and they are cleaned every day but when we have something like this, additional cleaning is required," she said.