Last February, an outbreak of the stomach flu at a Washington, D.C. elementary school left 79 students and 24 staff members sick. The cause? In a first-grade classroom, a computer mouse and keyboard tested positive for norovirus, otherwise known as the stomach flu.

More recently, a school in New York City has similarly experienced an ongoing outbreak of the norovirus since last November. A reported 500 people were infected, showing up each day at emergency rooms around the city.

"There is evidence that shared objects and surfaces help transmit disease," said Dr. Shua Chai, a CDC epidemiologist and co-author of the report, published in the Jan. 4 issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. "This is the first time that we have demonstrated that keyboards and computer mice can be a source of transmission of norovirus," he added. So make sure that if you or your child shares a computer, to wash your hands after using shared objects and invest in washable keyboards and mice, such as ones we've tested from Unotron and Belkin.