Calm urged amid fears of ‘superbug’

State health and education officials are preaching calm -- and cleanliness -- to discourage panic over an antibiotic-resistant “superbug” that has become a focus of fear nationwide after being implicated in the deaths of students in New York and Virginia.

“There is absolutely no panic, nor should there be,” said State Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, responding to a string of cases of methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus, or MRSA, in Sacramento and East Bay-area schools. “But there is some concern. We want our educational community to become vigilant in practicing good hygiene. That’s the best way to prevent staph from being transmitted.”

Last month’s widely publicized deaths of a Bedford County, Va., high school student and a Brooklyn middle school student came on the heels of a startling government report that in 2005, MRSA, a common skin infection, seriously sickened an estimated 94,000 Americans and killed almost 19,000, compared with 17,000 who died of AIDS.

The publicity prompted Olive Vista Middle School in Sylmar to notify parents last week of a single case of MRSA. The student was successfully treated by a physician and cleared to return to school, and the classrooms were disinfected, Ellen Morgan, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said Tuesday.

“This district didn’t want to be perceived as hiding something,” she said. “That way, if there were calls of concern, they would be answered by a professional.”

Few, if any, parents have called, Morgan said.

MRSA infections have long plagued the sick and elderly in hospitals and nursing homes. Indeed, the government study, conducted by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the vast majority -- 86% -- of the more serious, invasive cases (in which the skin infection entered the bloodstream) were linked to hospitals or other medical facilities. But 14% were not.

Since 2002, jails in Los Angeles County and across the country have struggled to contain outbreaks among inmates. Outbreaks then began to crop up among athletic teams and in gyms and spas. In Los Angeles County and nationwide, MRSA has become the most common cause of skin infections in hospital emergency rooms.

MRSA is not transmitted through the air but through close skin-to-skin contact, or by “bare bottoms on bare benches,” said Laurene Mascola, chief of Los Angeles County’s acute communicable disease control unit.

Factors that have been associated with the spread of MRSA include openings in the skin such as cuts or scrapes, contaminated items and surfaces, crowded living conditions and poor hygiene. Washing hands frequently and covering wounds are among the simplest preventive measures, Mascola said.

The USC football team battled recurring outbreaks in recent years, finally stopping them with stringent infection controls, including the use of hotter water to wash uniforms.

A staph infection typically shows up on skin as a pimple, rash, sty or boil. It frequently is mistaken for a spider bite.

Often, it can be successfully treated simply by lancing and draining the boil and treating the wound. If antibiotics are needed, some drugs are still capable of successfully knocking out both the hospital- and community-acquired strains.

If untreated staph enters the bloodstream, it can cause severe infections, even pneumonia. But officials stress that most staph infections are treatable.

“The bottom line is that your child is more at risk for obesity, or talking on a cellphone and having a car accident,” Mascola said.

mary.engel@latimes.com