Arlington County schools confirmed Wednesday that an elementary school student was infected with antibiotic-resistant staph, the system’s first known case since tighter reporting standards were put in place in the fall.
Parents at Long Branch Elementary school were informed Tuesday of the infection — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — after officials received the diagnosis Monday, said Donna Caruso, Arlington’s school health bureau chief.
She said the student was not hospitalized and has returned to class.
While the letter to parents emphasized that “appropriate measures are in place to reduce risk of transmission in the school,” Caruso said the facilities were not cleaned and disinfected in response to the presence of the bacteria.
There was no evidence the infection took place at the school, she said, and the cleaning would have been unnecessary.
The letter instead urged parents to diligently wash hands and properly clean wounds.
“[Staph] is basically passed from person to person, and primarily from hand to hand,” Caruso said.
The report of drug-resistant staph in Arlington schools comes as similar cases are cropping up throughout the region. Virginia began reporting the most dangerous strain of MRSA in October, after a high school football player died in Bedford County, and as of last week had recorded 85 cases since then, three of which were fatal.
“I’m sure that we have seen cases that were not reported to us,” Caruso said. “It’s only been a very short time that people have been necessarily reporting them. This is the first confirmed case we have had since the public has been very concerned about it.”
