On the day Paris is liberated from jail, the OTHER big story making the rounds today has to do with how contracting staph infection is more common in hospitals than originally reported. I first posted this nugget on Monday, and like the disease itself, it seems to be infectious among the news media, who enjoy showing photos of big open sores on legs and bellies.

Here's what Reuter's is reporting:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A drug-resistant type of "superbug" bacteria called MRSA is more than eight times as common as believed in U.S. hospitals, putting patients at risk and posing a big hygiene problem, experts said on Tuesday.

They found that nearly 5 percent of patients -- 46 out of every 1,000 -- were infected or colonized with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA for short.

The one-day "snapshot" look at infection suggests that 1.2 million U.S. hospital patients may be infected each year, the survey by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology or APIC found.

Most of the infections have clearly originated in the hospitals and do not, contrary to popular belief, affect mostly intensive care patients, the experts said.

"This rate is between 8 and 11 times greater than previous MRSA estimates (which were more limited in scope and used different methodologies)," the group said in its report.

The survey of 1,200 health care facilities in all 50 states found close to 8,000 patients infected with MRSA, or colonized by the bug, meaning they had it somewhere in or on their bodies but did not have symptoms.