NewsMax.com Wires
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2001

Thompson said he conducted a one-hour teleconference with state public health directors. He told reporters afterward: "We continue to aggressively examine all cases and exposures. We're also on the lookout for anything suspicious."

Anthrax cases continue to be diagnosed in New York and New Jersey, and anthrax spores now have been found at an Indianapolis postal site and in at least one overseas U.S. embassy – in Lithuania – that received mail from the State Department.

At least 17 locations in the Washington area, connected to the government and postal service, have tested positive for anthrax, including one building housing HHS offices. Additional anthrax spores have also been located in south Florida postal stations.

Thompson said about 450 HHS personnel were working on the growing anthrax scare, which Wednesday claimed a fourth victim, a New York hospital employee, to inhalation anthrax infection. This case, along with that of a bookkeeper in Trenton, N.J., who has a case of cutaneous, or skin anthrax, raised red flags in the government because they do not seem to have ties to the U.S. Postal Service, Congress or the media, which have encompassed the previous anthrax infection victims, now totaling 16 confirmed cases.

"We are responding to the medical crisis," Thompson said, defending the government's actions by saying until just a few weeks ago, only a handful of people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or elsewhere in HHS knew anything at all about anthrax. "Clinical information was decades old."

Thompson said the CDC had 25 epidemiologists on the case in Washington. There are 11 CDC staffers in Florida, 15 in New Jersey, 33 in New York City and an additional 85 in Washington. Nearly 100 public health officers are working to dispense antibiotics to thousands of people as a precaution.

Thompson called the cooperation in HHS and among other agencies involved in the investigation "exceptional" and said a special situation room had been established in HHS and at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta to handle coordination.

"I instructed people to issue a memo today to all federal agencies on how to respond, from the CDC," said Thompson, who has spent the week operating HHS out of the CDC offices in Atlanta.

CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, said the agency was learning more from each new anthrax case and was already making interesting observations, including one that those getting the more serious inhalation anthrax infections seem to be older. He said it was important to keep in mind it still is only a handful of patients, but "some of the sicker patients have been older." He said that the age factor potentially could be related to a decrease in the immune system's ability to fight off infection.

Koplan and Thompson said nothing was being ruled in or out of the investigation, including the possibilities that the U.S. postal system is more broadly contaminated than first believed or that this is just the beginning of an anthrax scare that will expand over time. "We don't rule out any of the options ... " Koplan said. "It's not an outbreak; it's a purposeful attack."

He repeated his belief that though the risk to the public of cross contamination of the mail was "not zero," it was "very low."

There are 16 confirmed cases of anthrax infection, including six cutaneous and 10 inhalation. Three cutaneous were in New York, and three were in New Jersey. Inhalation infections included two in Florida, one in New York, two in New Jersey and five in Washington. There also are five suspected cases of cutaneous infection: three in New York and two in New Jersey.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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