Thousands on Antibiotics in Anthrax Scares
By ABCNEWS.com
There's another confirmed case of inhalation anthrax in New Jersey. A female postal worker has been diagnosed with the more serious form of anthrax and is "recovering" in the hospital. Another postal worker has a "suspicious case." Officials are trying to determine whether there are more tainted letters.
One of two New Jersey postal workers sick with a serious respiratory illness has inhalation anthrax.
It had been suspected that the female postal worker had inhalation anthrax, but tests confirmed that diagnosis today. A second female postal worker is hospitalized and also suspected of having anthrax. Both women worked at near Trenton in Hamilton Township, where a regional processing center that handled letters sent to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and the The New York Post.
The case brings the number of confirmed anthrax inhalation cases in the United States to 14, not including three deaths. The number of confirmed cases of inhalation anthrax now stands at eight. There have been nine cases of cutaneous or skin anthrax. Three other New Jersey postal workers have cutaneous anthrax.
The new diagnosis comes as tests continued today at postal and government offices in Washington and elsewhere. Officials are trying to determine if there were other anthrax-laced letters in the mail system.
Thousands of postal workers were being urged to take preventive antibiotics.
Two Funerals in Washington
Two Washington postal service workers killed by inhalation anthrax were buried this weekend while more than 10,000 people in the United States remained on antibiotics — from postal employees to justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites).
Health officials are urging thousands of private mailroom workers who use the Brentwood mail distribution center in Washington, D.C., and about 600 people who pick up mail and packages at non-public areas of a post office in Hamilton Township, N.J., to begin taking antibiotics, according to the Associated Press.
The two deceased postal workers worked at the Brentwood facility.
Many of those who receive antibiotics will be getting doxycycline, rather than Cipro, which had been the drug of choice for treating possible or confirmed anthrax exposure. Doxycycline is cheaper and may have fewer side effects than Cipro.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites) said today on ABCNEWS' This Week that the anthrax that has infected more than a dozen Americans after being sent through the mail appears to respond to standard antibiotics.
"Now you have a much greater spectrum of antibiotics you can use, including doxycycline," Fauci said.
Investigators still appear far from determining who sent the anthrax. Contrary to reports, officials have not agreed on whether the perpetrators are foreign or domestic, said Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff.
"I don't think we really understand what the source of this anthrax terrorist attack is, in the United States," Card said today on NBC's Meet the Press . "The intelligence agencies, the FBI (news - web sites) and the CIA (news - web sites), have different schools of thought within each agency. I think we have to learn more about it. But we're going to be very, very vigilant."
"We know that this is the act of some kind of terrorist because these spores that are showing up in the mail do not show up naturally in our environment," Card added. "They have been milled."
Postal Funerals
Funeral services were held Saturday for Joseph Curseen, a postal worker at the now closed Brentwood facility in Washington, D.C., which processes mail for federal agencies and the rest of the city. He died of inhalation anthrax along with his colleague, Thomas Morris Jr.
The postal service has come under fire for not responding quickly enough to protect postal workers after anthrax was discovered in several facilities. The latest controversy is in New York, where anthrax was found in one processing center, but other areas of the post office remain open.
Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan told CBS' Face the Nation today that the New York employees are safe.
"We know exactly where the problems are," Nolan said. "We've done extensive testing. And it's extremely isolated. And we've cordoned off a wider area than the medical authorities have suggested that we cordon off, given our employees preventive medicine, masks, gloves — just to be sure."
In another precautionary measure, the post office in Washington signed a $40 million contract to buy eight electron-beam devices to sanitize letters and packages. The equipment will first be used in Washington.
Anthrax Cases
Inhalation infection
Florida tabloid photo editor Deceased
New Jersey Postal Worker Recovering
Florida tabloid mailroom worker Recovering
Two Washington, D.C., postal workers Deceased
Two Washington, D.C., postal workers Serious condition
Worker at State Dept. Mail Facility Guarded condition
Cutaneous infection
Two NBC News employees in New York Recovering
Child of ABCNEWS employee in New York Recovering
CBS News employee in New York Recovering
Three postal workers in New Jersey Recovering
Two employees at New York Post Recovering
Exposure
Six at Florida tabloid publisher
Two New York lab technicians
One New York police officer
28 at Hart Senate Office Building
Third N.J. Post Office Shut
The main Princeton, N.J. post office, actually located nearby in the town of West Windsor, N.J., is the latest postal facility to have been jolted by the possible presence of anthrax. It was shut down Saturday after a sample collected Oct. 16 and tested this week indicated a mail bin there was likely contaminated, state health officials told the Reuters news service.
"This bin was among the bins that went back and forth from Hamilton and Princeton," state health commissioner George DiFerdinando said in Saturday's editions of The Trenton Times newspaper. "The bin appeared suspicious to a postal worker. That's why it was presented to us. That really is all we know at this point."
The 60 to 70 workers in the main Princeton office do not need antibiotics because the level of contamination was considered small, but they would get assistance obtaining antibiotics if they chose to be treated, DiFerdinando told the Associated Press.
In total, officials closed three postal facilities near Trenton, N.J. At least five New Jersey postal workers have confirmed or suspected cases of anthrax (see chart above), and a Trenton firefighter also was hospitalized Saturday for a possible case of inhalation anthrax, according to wire services. Several anthrax-contaminated letters were postmarked from Trenton, N.J.
Postal facilities also have been closed in Washington. Officials are worried that there may be another letter laced with the bacterium that still has not been discovered.
Washington Anthrax
Morris' funeral on Friday preceded another finding of anthrax on Capitol Hill. Police Lt. Dan Nichols announced trace amounts of anthrax were found in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, continuing a string of anthrax discoveries in the nation's capital.
Spores were found in the offices of Rep. Mike Pence (news - bio - voting record), R-Ind., Rep. John E. Baldacci, D-Maine, and Rep. Rush Holt (news - bio - voting record), D- N.J., on the sixth and seventh floors of the Longworth building, which has been closed since Oct. 18. People who were in the building between Oct. 12 and Oct. 18 will be tested and treated with antibiotics.
"What we don't know is … if this is a situation where you have cross-contamination from the original Sen. Daschle letter, or if there's another piece of mail out there that we need to be concerned about," Nichols said at a press briefing Saturday morning.
Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office received a letter filled with anthrax, one of the most prominent in a series of Washington, D.C., anthrax scares.
An announcement Friday that one of the Supreme Court's off-site mail facilities tested positive for the bacteria means that every branch of the federal government has now been touched by anthrax. The Supreme Court was closed and scoured for anthrax after an air filter taken from the court's mail-inspection warehouse, a few miles from the main building, tested positive Monday.
Contingency plans are in place for justices to hear arguments elsewhere in Washington if testing shows the Supreme Court needs decontamination and must remain closed on Monday. In the meantime, the Supreme Court justices are taking antibiotics as a precaution along with other employees in the building, according to the Associated Press.
The scare at the apex of the government's judicial branch and in the Longworth building are just the latest to strike the federal government. Mail facilities at the White House tested positive earlier this week. And Capitol Hill offices were closed last week after the scare at Sen. Daschle's office.
On Friday, it was learned that mailrooms at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va., and the Army's Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., also have tested positive for anthrax. The mail facility at the intelligence agency's headquarters showed "medically insignificant" amounts of anthrax, a CIA spokesman said.
Anthrax traces also were discovered at the State Department, where a mail worker has been hospitalized with an inhaled anthrax infection and is in "guarded" condition. A coworker is being treated for flu-like symptoms consistent with anthrax. |
