Anthrax Inquiry Widens as New Inhalation Case Found

A postal worker in the nation’s capital was in “serious but stable” condition Sunday after being diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, the latest victim of a bioterrorist attack that will keep much of Capitol Hill shuttered today.

The unidentified man is the third American in recent weeks to test positive for the inhaled version of the disease, which often is fatal and has killed a tabloid newspaper employee in Boca Raton, Fla.

The diagnosis came as congressional leaders announced they would reopen the Capitol today but keep surrounding office buildings closed while they await the findings of biochemical experts scouring the structures for signs of deadly anthrax spores.

The announcement was made in a joint statement by House and Senate leaders who spoke Sunday afternoon by conference call with officials managing the sweep, which was triggered last week after an anthrax-laced letter was opened in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

Daschle and other leaders said they decided to reopen the Capitol based on “the advice of scientists and public health professionals, and test results received to date.” Office buildings would remain closed, however, “until definitive results are received,” which could take days.

Even though the Capitol is reopening, legislative business is likely to remain disrupted by the closed office buildings, which house thousands of congressional staff members and the offices of all 535 members of Congress.

Meanwhile, dozens of FBI agents continued to comb the neighborhoods of Trenton, N.J., where three anthrax-laced letters were postmarked and where two postal workers have contracted treatable, skin-borne versions of the disease.

“We are still investigating . . . and probably will be for at least a few days,” FBI special agent Sandra Carroll said.

Sunday’s diagnosis of the Washington postal worker’s condition is the ninth anthrax infection reported in recent weeks. Three of the victims have contracted inhalation anthrax, in which spores lodge in the lungs, can spread to the lymphatic system and gradually shut down a victim’s body with cell-killing toxins.

The two other inhalation cases involved employees of American Media Inc., a Boca Raton-based publisher of tabloid newspapers. Photo editor Bob Stevens died Oct. 5. Mail room worker Ernesto Blanco, 73, was treated before developing serious symptoms and is in stable condition.

In Washington, Dr. Donald Poretz, an infectious disease specialist, said the infected postal worker is “seriously ill but in stable condition” after being placed on an aggressive regimen of Cipro, an antibiotic used to treat anthrax.

Officials haven’t determined whether the employee, who handles packages, may have come in contact with the Daschle letter.

“I don’t have a good answer for why a postal worker who handled packages has inhalation anthrax,” said Dr. Rima Khabbaz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “We don’t have any obvious history of his handling any open packages or leaking packages.”

Authorities said the man, a Virginia resident, works at a postal processing facility in northeast Washington that handles much of the city’s mail, including millions of letters and packages delivered to Congress each week. The worker checked into Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia on Friday after complaining of flu-like symptoms for several days, Poretz said.

Late Sunday, city health officials said they had discovered two other patients who had checked into area hospitals exhibiting symptoms consistent with anthrax. It was not known whether they also were postal employees.

“They are showing symptoms that raise our suspicions,” said Dr. Ivan Walks, chief health officer for the District of Columbia. He said the patients are being tested and are taking precautionary doses of Cipro.

Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said health officials would begin testing 2,100 other employees at the mail facility where the infected man worked, as well as 150 postal workers at an airmail handling center near Baltimore-Washington International Airport, where he also occasionally worked.

Both facilities were shut down Sunday for testing, Williams said.

Walks said journalists may have been exposed to anthrax when they attended a news conference several days ago at the main facility. The journalists also will be tested, Walks said.

Authorities said a sample of anthrax from the Washington mail facility was being tested to determine whether it matched the strain found in letters to Daschle and NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw.

Both letters made references to Allah. But White House officials repeated Sunday that they have no evidence linking the anthrax to the Al Qaeda terrorist network operated by Osama bin Laden, or to any rogue nation such as Iraq.

“I don’t put it past Iraq,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday in an interview on CNN. “We know they have been working on this kind of terror weapon. But I don’t know and I’m not sure our law enforcement officials yet know who our primary suspect is.”

Sunday’s diagnosis added to the anxiety that has gripped the nation’s capital since an aide to Daschle opened an anthrax-laced envelope disguised as a letter from a New Jersey elementary school.

In the panic that followed, thousands of congressional employees lined up for anthrax screening tests, office buildings were sealed and House leaders Wednesday closed the historic chamber for the first time in response to a military or health threat.

Investigators so far have found traces of anthrax in three Capitol Hill locations, including Daschle’s office in the Hart building where the letter was opened and mail rooms that serve the House and the Senate. Authorities reported no new evidence Sunday of contamination.

Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said more than 4,500 people have been tested there; 28 of those have tested positive for exposure to anthrax. But no one in Washington had tested positive for infection until Sunday.

Cases of inhalation anthrax are exceedingly rare and almost always are fatal. From 1900 to 1976, only 18 cases were reported in the United States.

Such statistics appeared to color the remarks of government officials earlier Sunday. Williams described the postal worker as “gravely ill” and offered his prayers to the victim’s family.

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a surgeon who has become the Senate’s leading spokesman on the anthrax outbreak, said the new diagnosis was “tragic news.”

But health experts appeared to provide a more upbeat prognosis for the postal worker later in the day, and said advances in technology and treatment have changed assumptions about patients’ abilities to recover from inhalation anthrax.

Acknowledging historically high mortality rates, Poretz said, “I’m not really sure that’s the case [now], in a country with facilities where people can be diagnosed earlier . . . and treated aggressively earlier.”

In New Jersey, state health officials said 13 of 22 environmental samples taken by FBI agents at the Hamilton Square mail processing center where three anthrax-laced letters passed through had come back positive for anthrax. Another 22 samples gathered by health officials from the building’s public areas were negative.

Tests were not back from the small post office branch in nearby Ewing, where a female letter carrier with a confirmed case of cutaneous anthrax worked. That carrier’s mail route--believed to be the origin of letters containing anthrax sent to Daschle, Brokaw and the New York Post--is the focus of an FBI investigation.

Meanwhile, local postal union leaders and elected officials expressed anger Sunday about the amount of time it took the state and U.S. postal authorities to get a response plan in place. In addition to the infected letter carrier, a postal employee at the Hamilton Square facility has a confirmed case of cutaneous anthrax. Another facility employee--a Pennsylvania resident--is considered a “suspect case.”

On Sunday, Hamilton Square Mayor Glen Gilmore said health officials told him all 1,000 postal employees from both facilities should be tested. Previously, the testing was described as voluntary.

“I’m upset that these workers haven’t been treated like a person should be,” Gilmore said.

Postal employees scrambled Sunday to get makeshift sorting facilities up and running in massive tents erected at the Hamilton Square facility. The center, which handles 500,000 pieces of mail daily, has been closed, and health officials said it could be weeks before it is reopened. Postal workers sorted mail outside this weekend and about 60% of mail was delivered to customers, postal authorities said.