UK teens ill after NY visit

4 dozen to hospital

Four dozen teenage British tourists landed in a DC hospital over the weekend after some of them became ill with food-poisoning symptoms during a jaunt to Manhattan, officials said Monday.

About a dozen of the students first made a trip to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s hospital on the Upper West Side on Saturday morning with symptoms such as nausea and vomiting.

The teens, who were staying at the HI New York City Hostel on Amsterdam Avenue, had eaten at a seafood restaurant in Times Square the night before, the hostel’s manager told The Post on Monday.

“They all think it was [the food],” said the manager, George Finn, adding that one of the group’s chaperones “mentioned that they were all eating there together and shortly thereafter got sick.”

City Health Department officials are investigating the students’ plight, including where they ate in the Big Apple.

The young tourists eventually continued on their trip to the Harrington Hotel in downtown DC on Sunday.

Later that evening, one teen reported having “gastrointestinal distress,” and scores more followed suit.

“One by one, people began indicating they were feeling ill,” said Vito Maggiolo, the public information officer for DC Fire and EMS.

Maggiolo and the hotel’s manager, Ann Terry, said many in the group were already sick when they arrived. At least a dozen people in the group reported symptoms, but officials decided to take the entire bunch — 48 teens and three adults — to four local hospitals as a precaution.

The DC Department of Health said it suspects the group was sickened by norovirus. The virus, symptoms of which include vomiting and diarrhea, is highly contagious and is mostly spread through contaminated food or water or through someone who has been infected, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Health officials said the group should self-quarantine at the hotel until the symptoms subside.