Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Additional anthrax cases raise concerns
By Paul Recer
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A New York woman believed suffering from anthrax struggled for her life Tuesday, triggering fresh concerns the disease was spreading beyond the intersection of the postal service and the news media. Postmaster General John Potter said several billion dollars will be needed to safeguard the nation’s mail system.
The nation’s capital struggled with fresh evidence of contamination as officials shut down a second post office and said it would take two weeks to decontaminate an anthrax-plagued office building that houses 50 senators.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., whose office was found to be contaminated last week, said he had been told by investigators that the letter that carried the spores into the Hart building — addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle — contained two grams of anthrax, amounting to billions of spores.

Federal and local health officials said they were particularly troubled by the illness of the 61-year-old New York woman, who works in a stockroom at a health facility.

“There’s no clear linkage with the mail,” said Dr. Steven Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But later in the morning, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, head of the CDC, suggested one possible link. He said that at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital where the woman works, the mail room and the stock room were combined until a remodeling undertaken over the past two weeks.

New York Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said the woman was “struggling for her survival.” He said other hospitals in the city had been alerted “to take precautions ... and share their findings with us.”

Not counting the woman hospitalized in New York, authorities have tallied 15 confirmed cases of anthrax nationwide since early this month. They include eight cases of the inhalation form of the disease, three deaths among them — and an additional seven people with the less severe skin form of the illness.

Koplan told reporters that the number of Americans taking antibiotics as a precaution was counted in the tens of thousands, and the government is attempting to track reports of adverse side effects.

Potter testified before a Senate committee that pressed him on his agency’s response to the outbreak of anthrax through the mail.

Asked about efforts under way to safeguard the system, he said, “I can tell you for certain it will be several billion dollars.”

He also said the paper contained in the anthrax-tainted letter Daschle was more porous than the paper inside two other letters known to have been spiked.

“I think there was a different type of paper,” he said. That “allowed the anthrax to move through the paper. That’s my assumption. I don’t consider myself an expert but that appears to be the case.”

All three letters were dated Sept. 11, the day hijackers killed an estimated 5,000 in terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But the mail to NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw and the New York Post bore postmarks of Sept. 18, while the mail to Daschle was postmarked Oct. 9.

The Daschle letter is believed responsible for part or perhaps all of the contamination from the main postal facility in the nation’s capital throughout the city, affecting more than one dozen federal facilities and forcing the closure of yet another post office earlier Tuesday.

Pence’s statement that the letter contained billions of spores suggested it could have spread infection widely. Dr. David Sullivan, a Johns Hopkins University expert on anthrax, said two grams of the substance could mean up to 20 billion spores, depending on the purity and the moisture content. Other officials have said previously that inhalation of between 8,000 and 10,000 spores is needed to cause illness.

In New Jersey, officials confirmed that a 51-year-old Hamilton Township woman not linked to the postal service was suffering from the skin form of anthrax. The source of the infection also was unknown, but officials said it could have come from contact with a piece of mail.

The circle of anthrax contamination widened as new traces of anthrax spores were found in the Capitol Police office of the Ford House building, which was already closed because of positive tests in its mail room. Anthrax also was confirmed late Monday in a downtown Agriculture Department office mailroom and technicians were considering a plan to pump a fumigating gas into the shuttered Hart Senate Office Building to kill any lingering anthrax spores there.

In Washington, officials closed the Friendship post office after anthrax spores were found. Postal workers there were advised to start antibiotic therapy.

FBI officials, meanwhile, issued a broad new terrorism warning, putting law enforcement offices on the highest alert.

In a new threat warning sent to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, the FBI said Monday it had credible information of terrorism threats, but no suggestion of the targets or methods for possible attacks. The new alert was based on intelligence reports that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network may strike, officials said.

“The administration has concluded based on information developed that there may be additional terrorist attacks within the United States and against United States interests over the next week,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said. It was the second such alert issued this month.

Ashcroft urged Americans to be vigilant and to report unusual circumstances or behavior. He also called for patience in the face of tightened security measures.

Officials said the source of the latest New Jersey anthrax case was uncertain and the case was under investigation.

“I don’t think it is appropriate to draw conclusions about what this latest case may imply,” said the CDC’s Ostroff.

Acting New Jersey Gov. Donald DiFrancesco ordered anthrax spore testing at 44 post offices in seven counties. All send mail to the Hamilton processing center. Some of these post offices had been tested earlier.

The Hamilton center handled anthrax-tainted envelopes delivered to Daschle’s office in the Hart building and to the New York offices of NBC News and the New York Post.
Anthrax escaping from a letter opened in Daschle’s office on Oct. 15 forced closure of the Hart building. Environmental Protection Agency officials said Monday they hoped experts would approve a plan to pump chlorine dioxide gas throughout the building to snuff out any remaining anthrax. The process could take 16 days, but would enable the nine-story building — where 50 senators have offices — to reopen in mid-November.