The Incarcerated Life: Day 2, Staph cooties and isolation

By Stone Martindale Jun 5, 2007, 15:02 GMT

Paris Hilton REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger (AUSTRIA)

News reports are atwitter with the fact that Paris Hilton may be facing a serious threat at the Lynwood Correction Facility where she is serving her sentence.

Apperently the prison is rife with staph infection, with over 402 inmates diagnosed with the serious infection last year alone, according to Inside Edition.

necrotizing foot-courtesy of Scripps Institute

They claim that for every 1,000 inmates that enter the facility, 13 will contract some version of this infection that is caused by the staphylococcus bacteria.

"At this time it's impossible to eradicate staph because it's spread person to person. It can be asymptomatic and there is no vaccine," an epidemiologist from the LA County Department of Public Health tells Inside Edition.

"MRSA is a kind of staph infection that means it's resistant to the first line of antibiotics we usually use to treat staph infection," says the expert. "That is the kind that is so prevalent right now or so common in the jail."

Perez Hilton muses it is all due to dirty surfaces and manky sexual contact: "Is that because all the hos are making out with each other?"

Staph infections are serious bad news, and can ultimately turn into a necrotizing flesh eating nightmare if it isn't managed.

As for Paris, she's being kept in away from the general population in Lynwood, isolated in her small cell for 23 out of the 24 hours of the day.