Washington, D.C, area parents swamped schools Friday with calls and overwhelmed Internet lists for information about staph inspections following a report on the NBC early morning news show "Today" that was broadcast from outside Walt Whitman High School in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.

"They are using our school as a backdrop to tell the national story, NOT because we have more staph infections!" Whitman Principal Alan Goodwin quickly told parents in an e-mail.

School officials throughout the area tried to allay fears, saying the germ that has worried football coaches and health officers in recent years is only now entering the broader consciousness because of a death in southern Virginia's Bedford County and a wave of news coverage.

Health officers and educators said they don't know what to do about the flurry of "superbug" reports, which include 14 from Montgomery County, six each from Fairfax and Prince William counties, two each from Howard County and Alexandria, and one from Anne Arundel County. In addition, a teacher at Davis Elementary School in Southeast Washington has been infected. A case of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus has been diagnosed in a D.C. firefighting recruit, but he has been cleared to return to training.

Reports of the staph infection aren't assembled, compared and reported with the same attention as outbreaks of tuberculosis or meningitis, officials said.

Health officials say drug-resistant staph is increasingly common outside of hospitals and is affecting otherwise healthy people more often, particularly football players, whose sport requires skin contact, which is one of the ways staph is spread.

Many of the staph infections are fairly mild, but the virulent strain can turn a cut into a swollen, inflamed and painful wound. At first, such an infection might resemble a pimple, boil or spider bite. If it becomes invasive and potentially serious, symptoms can include fever, chills and shortness of breath. The infection, confirmed through a skin or blood culture, requires treatment with several antibiotics.

Christopher Novak, a medical epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health, said the number of MRSA cases has been increasing nationwide, but simple precautions, such as hand-washing, significantly limit the risk of infection. "I think people should be concerned. They should not be fearful," Novak said.

(Agencies via Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2007)