This is like 20 minutes from me

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WESTON, Conn. -- A case of staph infection has
been reported at Newtown High School, making it the second Connecticut
school to have a student sickened with the infection.VIDEO: Resistant Staph Infection Strikes At Least 2 Conn. StudentsEarlier
Wednesday, news spread that at least one Weston High School student has
been diagnosed with a potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant staph
infection.

Weston school officials sent a letter home to parents informing them
that one case of the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus
infection, or MRSA, has been confirmed at the school. Health officials
are waiting for results of tests on another student. A similar
letter was sent to parents of students at Newtown High School.
Officials also posted the letter on the school's Web site.MRSA
is a strain of staph bacteria that does not respond to penicillin and
related antibiotics but can be treated with other drugs. The infection
can be spread by skin-to-skin contact or sharing an item used by an
infected person, particularly one with an open wound.About 900
cases are reported to the state Department of Public Health each year
and hundreds of others never become serious enough to require
reporting, said Dr. James Hadler, the department's chief epidemiologist."My
guess is that every school has at least several of them per year and
maybe more," Hadler said. "We know that there are thousands of MRSA
infections out there per year."Citing privacy laws, Hadler would
not say if the department had received a report from Weston. Staph
infections, including the serious MRSA strain, have spread through
schools nationwide in recent weeks, according to health and education
officials. A student in Virginia died from a similar infection earlier
this week.Hadler said MRSA infections are often spread in
schools among members of the same gym class or sports team, through the
shared use of towels or skin-to-skin contact.Schools that report
such cases are advised to eliminate the source of the infection and
screen students for boils or lesions that might be infected.Students who are being treated for MRSA infections can attend school as long as they keep the infected skin covered, he said."These
are not infections we want to mess around with even though they are
common," he said. "Anyone with a skin infection should not be having
direct skin-to-skin contact with others."

So now we are getting letters and what not, everyone is being encouraged to wash their hands more, and rumors and going like nuts. Apparently it's spreading really fast with sports because of the contact and cuts/scrapes everyone has. I'm a little OCD, so I wash my hands a lot anyways; like 6-10 times a day, lol, but it's like a herd of people in the bathrooms washing their hands and stuff lol. Kind of scary though.

Edited by Dye Playa - 19 October 2007 at 9:19pm