MRSA Scare Prompts Kentucky County to Close All Schools for Disinfection
Posted on October 27, 2007
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Following the recent confirmation of at least five staph infections in Kentucky’s Pike County school district, all 23 district schools will be closed for disinfection this Monday. The closing will impact approximately 10,300 students.
Principals will oversee the sanitizing of classrooms, bathrooms, cafeterias, and hallways, as well as school buses, fields, and playgrounds. A private company will handle locker room disinfection and another round of cleanings will take place in early November during previously scheduled school closings.
Similar precautions were taken in Morgan County last Wednesday after a student at Morgan County High School was diagnosed with the dangerous superbug known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
Over 200 students at Pike Central High School staged a sit-in on October 17 in an effort to convince school officials to disinfect the facilities. The students’ suspicions of a MRSA infection at the school was later confirmed.
Pike County Schools Superintendent Roger Wagner emphasized that staph infections are nothing new, and that there is not a MRSA epidemic in the county. The stepped-up cleaning measures are aimed at prevention and helping reassure parents concerned about the confirmed MRSA cases at Pike Central and East Ridge High Schools.
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