HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – At least two Connecticut high school students – one in Weston and a second in Newtown – have been diagnosed with a potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant staph infection, their respective schools official said Wednesday.
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.”
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