ChicSunTimes

Experts unable to track anthrax in 4th deadly case

November 1, 2001

BY BRYAN SMITH StAFF REPORTER

She lived alone in her Bronx home and commuted by subway to her job at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital.

She worked in a basement supply room that once was a mailroom but was otherwise unremarkable.

Three days ago, she checked herself into the hospital with flulike symptoms: a headache and a high fever.

On Wednesday, the 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant became the fourth person to die of inhalation anthrax.

Now health experts are scrambling to find out how someone with seemingly no connection to any known areas of anthrax exposure could have contracted the most deadly form of the disease and died from it.

In doing so, they are also confronting a stark new possibility in the spreading bioterrorism threat, fueled by another case of anthrax in someone outside the mail system: that people are being exposed to the disease in ways other than the mail.

''All bets are off,'' said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. "We really need to do--the public health officials, the forensic group--has to do a real full court press on trying to track this down. This is critical,'' he said Wednesday on NBC's ''Today'' show.

Investigators have descended on the hospital where Kathy T. Nguyen worked and her home for environmental tests, but so far all have proven negative for anthrax.

A sample taken from the woman's clothing had yielded ''some indications'' of the bacteria, and further tests were being completed, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, but the mystery had health experts perplexed on Wednesday.

To unravel that mystery, investigators were trying to reconstruct the last days of the woman's life, hoping to discover who her friends were, where she had been and how she might have come into contact with a disease that until now had been confined to mailrooms and offices that had received suspicious mail.

''Specifically, in the case of Ms. Nguyen, they are following all her travels,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Wednesday. "They are trying to determine if she traveled anywhere domestically or foreign, who she may have come into contact with, any of the people that she's associated with to determine if they have any information about how she could have contracted the anthrax.''

Nguyen had worked in a basement supply room of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital that had at one time been a mailroom, but negative tests for anthrax have ruled out that the room is where the exposure occurred.

After Nguyen brought herself in for treatment, doctors sedated her and put her on a ventilator. Officials said she had been too sick to assist them in their investigation.

Up to 2,000 hospital workers, patients and visitors who have been to the hospital since Oct. 11 are being offered antibiotics, officials said Tuesday. The hospital was closed, and other hospitals in the city were alerted to take precautions and report any suspicions.

Also on Wednesday:

*Health officials were urging people at highest risk for contracting the flu to get vaccines. With flu season approaching, the officials are playing down the chances that Americans who get sick will mistakenly think they have anthrax.

*A senior State Department official said he believes terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New York would have used nuclear weapons Sept. 11 had they had them.

*As warplanes launched heavy bombing raids on Taliban front line positions north of the Afghan capital, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said American soldiers are in Afghanistan advising anti-Taliban forces and helping guide bombs to their targets.

*President Bush sought to break a Senate logjam Wednesday by urging lawmakers to pass an economic stimulus package of mainly tax cuts before November's end. The Senate's top Democrat insisted there would be no deal without broad assistance for laid-off workers.

*A Chicago man convicted Wednesday of making a threatening gesture aboard an airliner was sentenced to the maximum 30 days, 21 days of which he already served.

*Anthrax spores were found on a piece of equipment sent to an Indianapolis facility for cleaning from a contaminated mail-processing center in Washington, D.C., Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon said Wednesday.

Stimulus package pushed

Bush told a group of business leaders that Wednesday's report of a drop in the nation's gross domestic product was the latest sign of economic weakness made worse by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

''It's time for our government to act in a positive and constructive way,'' the president said. ''The Congress needs to pass a stimulus package and get it to my desk before the end of November.''

The plan should be mostly tax cuts because lawmakers already have approved $55 billion in spending since Sept. 11, Bush said. He repeated his four cornerstone proposals: acceleration of tax cuts set to take effect in the future; a new round of rebate checks for people left out of the first batch; repeal of the corporate alternative minimum tax, and greater expense write-offs for business investment.

Sentence for threat

Yaser Yassin, 25, was sentenced Wednesday after being convicted of drawing a plastic knife across his throat while glaring at a flight attendant during a flight.

U.S. Magistrate Susan D. Wigenton pronounced the verdict and sentence against Yassin immediately after hearing less than an hour of testimony from a flight attendant and FBI agent.

Caroline M. Jackson testified that Yassin frightened her about an hour into Continental Airlines Flight 91 when she asked what beverage he wanted.

"He then proceeded to stare at me, saying nothing," Jackson said.

She demonstrated how Yassin slowly drew the knife down from one ear, and then down from another, and told of her immediate fears.

"Oh, my God, what has he done to this aircraft?" Jackson said. "Is he going to come after me? Is he going to come out of his seat? What's he going to do?"

Jackson said she was so startled she cannot remember whether she served him a drink. She notified other flight attendants, and the cockpit crew had her write an account of the incident, which was transmitted during the flight, she said.

Yassin later called out to her, "I don't want you to get the wrong idea,'' Jackson testified. "I told him what he did was very scary. Very scary."

Yassin was taken off the flight upon landing at Newark International Airport about 5 a.m. Oct. 10. Five hours later, he denied using the knife, then cried and "apologized profusely,'' FBI Special Agent Alexis L. Smollock testified.

Soldiers' role

American soldiers are in Afghanistan advising anti-Taliban forces and helping guide bombs to their targets, Rumsfeld said as he prepared to visit the region this weekend.

Rumsfeld will travel to Moscow to meet Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, then visit leaders of several countries surrounding Afghanistan to shore up efforts in the war against terrorism, the Pentagon said today.

And the Pentagon has informed the White House that Rumsfeld intends to call up more than the 50,000 troops he initially thought would be the most needed for the campaign in Afghanistan and homeland defense, she said. She didn't give a new number, but under an order signed by Bush shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, up to 1 million could be activated.

Meanwhile, warplanes launched heavy bombing raids on Taliban front line positions north of the Afghan capital. Witnesses said it was some of the heaviest bombing of the front line yet, with at least 11 bombs striking targets.

Nuclear threat

A senior State Department official said he was convinced that if the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New York had possessed nuclear weapons, they would have used them. All of lower Manhattan could have been devastated, with far more damage than the deadly toll in the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, John R. Bolton said.

''Had these people had ballistic missile technology and nuclear weapons, there isn't the slightest doubt they would have used it,'' he said.

Bush will try again to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to cut off the spread of sophisticated technology and conventional weapons to Iran when they meet next month in Washington and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bolton said.

Economy shrinks

The economy, battered by a yearlong slowdown and the jolt of the terror attacks, shrank at a 0.4 percent rate from July through September, a decline that could signal the end to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.

The drop in the gross domestic product was the biggest since the first quarter of 1991 when the country was in the depths of the last recession, the Commerce Department reported.

The weak performance reflected a sharp pullback by consumers in spending, which slowed to the weakest pace in more than eight years, and a continued plunge in investment by businesses in new plants and equipment.

Anthrax in Midwest

Spores were found on a piece of mail equipment sent to Indiana from Washington, D.C., for cleaning.

One test was positive out of 44 tests conducted on the equipment, which was sent to the Critical Parts Center.

The anthrax was limited to the equipment, and no sign of infection has been found among the 103 workers at the facility, O'Bannon said.

''The exposure was very limited. At this level of exposure, anthrax is not a threat to human health in Indiana,'' the governor added.

The Critical Parts Center near the Indianapolis International Airport was closed Oct. 23, and testing at the site was conducted Friday.

Also, an inspection team searching for signs of anthrax at a Carol Stream postal sorting center needs an extra day to complete its work, postal officials said Wednesday.

A four-man team testing sorting machines and air ducts at the 400,000-square-foot processing center was expected to finish its work Wednesday, but will require more time to complete the work, postal service spokesman Tim Ratliff said.

''It's taking a little longer than we thought,'' Ratliff said, citing the large size of the center as the reason for the delay in completing the precautionary tests.

The postal service is testing 200 sorting centers nationwide to determine whether any contain traces of the deadly bacteria that has contaminated several postal centers on the East Coast.

The Carol Stream processing center, which handles about five million pieces of mail daily, is being tested because it is one of the largest in the area and it handles a large amount of mail from the East Coast.

The testing, which began Tuesday, hasn't caused any delays in mail sorting, Ratliff said. Test results won't be available for four to five days, he said.

Contributing: Dan Rozek, Sun-Times wires

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001

Answers

Thursday November 1 1:27 PM ET

Mail May Not Be to Blame for Death

By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Investigators reported ``no clues'' to suggest the mail is to blame for the anthrax death of a New York City hospital worker, and the hunt continued for an explanation for how someone outside the mail or the media was infected. More than 170 postal workers in Missouri began preventive antibiotics after traces were found in Kansas City.

Just outside Washington, anthrax was found in yet more government buildings, with preliminary tests showing spores in four Food and Drug Administration mail rooms. Postal authorities began picking through piles of decontaminated mail, searching for a possible unopened tainted letter.

In New York, investigators traced Kathy T. Nguyen's final steps in an attempt to find out how she was infected with inhalation anthrax. The search was moving ``at a serious pace,'' said Dr. Julie Gerberding of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

``We are reviewing the routes that mail might have traveled to reach her,'' Gerberding said. ``So far we have found no clues to suggest that the mail or the mail handling was the cause of her exposure.''

Still, Gerberding said, the investigation suggests Nguyen was not exposed in a public place because additional patients have not turned up. ``It's somewhat reassuring that this was not something that posed a broader threat,'' she said.

Investigators found that the anthrax she was exposed to responds to antibiotics, she added, and officials suspect that Nguyen may have sought treatment too late for the drugs to work.

Disease detectives were studying Nguyen's life after she fell victim to inhalation anthrax on Wednesday, the fourth person to die since the anthrax-by-mail attack was discovered nearly a month ago. Her death had officials worried that the anthrax attack, so far concentrated among postal and media employees, could be spreading to a new group of Americans.

``We need to find out how she was infected,'' said Surgeon General David Satcher. ``It's very strange.''

And authorities awaited test results for a Nguyen co-worker at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital who has a suspicious skin lesion.

Anthrax has killed four people and infected six others with the dangerous inhalation form of the disease. An additional seven people have been infected with the highly curable skin form.

Preliminary tests Wednesday found anthrax spores in a Kansas City, Mo., postal facility, extending the anthrax threat to the Midwest. More than 170 workers joined tens of thousands others on the East Coast who are taking antibiotics to ward off possible infection. Anthrax was also found at a private postal maintenance center in Indianapolis on equipment sent from a contaminated mail-processing center in Trenton, N.J.

The positive test results in Kansas City came in two spots on one trash bag where envelopes were discarded in the first-day cancellation section of the Stamp Fulfillment Services Center, which is housed in an underground complex.

The FDA said Thursday that preliminary tests found anthrax spores in mailrooms of four of its five Rockville, Md., buildings where mail is processed. While confirmatory tests are pending, the FDA closed all mailrooms for cleaning and put its mail handlers on preventive antibiotics.

In Vilnius, Lithuania, a lab confirmed Thursday that traces of anthrax were found in at least one mailbag used by the U.S. Embassy in the former Soviet Baltic republic, marking the first known of appearance in Europe.

The news was better inside Washington's postal system, where three post offices closed for decontamination reopened and city officials reconsidered whether thousands of mail handlers in private offices and outlying post offices need to take preventive medicine, as was recommended last week. Nearby, the Baltimore Air Mail Facility was reopening when testing found no anthrax after the facility had been shuttered for nearly two weeks.

``We have gotten our arms around this and we may be on the other side,'' said Dr. Ivan Walks, the city's chief health officer.

Not so in New York, where investigators were puzzled by the death of Nguyen, a 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who checked into the hospital three days earlier. Sedated and using a ventilator to breathe, she was never able to provide investigators clues about where she might have encountered the deadly bacteria.

Environmental testing at her Bronx apartment and at the outpatient hospital where she worked found no evidence of anthrax. Preliminary tests found spores on her clothing, but it was unclear whether that would help solve what Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health called a ``very puzzling mystery.''

Investigators worked to assemble the pieces of her life, a difficult task given that she lived alone and had no close family. They searched her home, interviewed neighbors, tracked down friends and tried to figure out where she might have traveled during the final days of her life.

The woman worked in a basement supply room that had recently included a mailroom, but there were no reports of suspicious letters or other obvious cause for alarm - a sharp contrast to other cases in which tainted mail has been linked to the disease.

Satcher said authorities are very concerned that her infection represents a new wave in the anthrax attacks.

``There might well be other letters than the ones that we've been familiar with already,'' Satcher said Wednesday on CNN's ``Larry King Live.''

But John Nolan, deputy postmaster general, told NBC's ``Today'' show that the public should be confident about their mail. ``Compared to almost anything else you do in life, handling the mail is among the safest things you could possibly do,'' Nolan said, adding that people should immediately notify authorities of any suspicious mail.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said consumers should feel confident about the safety of their food supply, though she recommended thorough washing of fruits and vegetables and thorough cooking of meat.

There was anxiety over the case of a 51-year-old New Jersey woman who was diagnosed earlier in the week with skin anthrax. She told authorities that she did not recall opening any suspicious mail at the accounting firm where she works, and investigators have not discovered any other way that she may have been exposed to anthrax.

That suggests that innocent mail may have been contaminated while it was processed, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

``The risk from mail is not zero. It is very low but it's not zero,'' Koplan said Wednesday. ``That low amount of risk may translate into cases occasionally such as this.''

Also in New Jersey, officials reported a new suspected case of skin anthrax involving a postal worker who lives in Delaware. The man, who was not identified, works in Bellmawr, N.J., and if his case is confirmed, it will be the first in the state outside the Trenton area.

The regional facility where the man works, which delivers mail to 1.1 million addresses in southern New Jersey and Delaware, has been shut down.

Despite an intensive four-week investigation by the FBI and health experts, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he had ``no progress to report'' in identifying the culprits or preventing further attacks.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001

Thursday November 1 11:53 AM ET

Anthrax Found in More U.S. Govt. Buildings

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four more U.S. government buildings tested positive for anthrax on Thursday and investigators retraced the steps of a Manhattan woman who died from the disease, anxious to determine whether the germ warfare agent has spread to a new group of Americans.

In Washington, where many mail rooms in government buildings have been contaminated, officials said preliminary tests found anthrax in four of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's mail rooms in buildings in the Rockville area, a suburb north of the capital.

``They are presumptive positive results. They are not final,'' FDA spokesman Lawrence Bachorik said, adding that people who worked in the mail rooms were being given antibiotics as a precautionary measure.

In New York, teams of investigators fanned out across the city to retrace the final days of Kathy Nguyen, a 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who on Wednesday became the fourth person to die of anthrax inhalation over the past month in America.

Investigators interviewed her friends and neighbors, went to places she frequented and followed the same route she took each day to the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital where she worked as a stock room clerk.

Nguyen's death seemed to break a pattern in the anthrax scare since the Sept. 11 attacks on America when hijackers rammed planes into the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing about 4,800 people.

Most of the 16 people confirmed as having anthrax so far have been linked either to the postal service or to media companies and were known to have been in contact with anthrax-laced letters.

Of the other three inhalation anthrax deaths, two were Washington D.C. mail workers and the third was a pictures editor at a supermarket tabloid in Florida. In all of those cases, victims apparently handled contaminated mail.

INVESTIGATORS STUMPED BY WOMAN'S DEATH

What has stumped investigators is that Nguyen's Bronx apartment and the hospital where she worked have so far tested negative for anthrax. The only clue is some of Nguyen's clothing showed ``indications'' of anthrax.

Investigators were also waiting for anthrax test results from a co-worker of Nguyen who reported a suspicious skin lesion. Hundreds of workers from the hospital were still lining up on Thursday for preventive antibiotics.

The Postal Service, which has been at the front line of the anthrax attacks, continued anthrax testing of about 200 facilities across the country.

Postal Service spokesman Bob Anderson said small traces of anthrax had been found on Wednesday in two trash cans in a postal facility in Kansas City but there was no evidence of contamination of mail in the city.

``That center handles requests from stamp collectors and does not do general mail delivery,'' said Anderson.

In Indianapolis, he said a small amount of anthrax was found at a private facility that repaired mail equipment. The anthrax, he said, was discovered on equipment sent for repair from Brentwood, the main processing center in Washington D.C. where two workers have died from anthrax.

Anderson said the equipment would either be decontaminated or destroyed, adding that all mail from Brentwood had been sent to Lima, Ohio, where it would be redistributed after it had been sanitized.

Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan, in an interview on NBC's ``Today'' show, said the authorities had begun a study of everything that left Brentwood.

``We're testing a number of different facilities around the country -- anything that would have even received any shipments of mail or other items from Brentwood,'' he said. ``But most of that testing is completed now and has been fine.''

LITHUANIA CONFIRMS ANTHRAX

Outside of the United States, Lithuanian health officials confirmed anthrax has been found in mail sent to the United States embassy in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

The State Department said on Wednesday preliminary tests indicated anthrax spores in two of its five mail bags sent to Vilnius. Lithuanian health officials said on Thursday they could confirm anthrax had been found.

It was the second U.S. diplomatic mission, after Peru, to find the bacteria in mail sent from the State Department in Washington, one of several government buildings contaminated with anthrax.

Bush on Thursday proposed making it a crime to engage in biological weapons activities and creating a U.N. mechanism to investigate outbreaks of suspected germ warfare.

Bush, in a White House statement, proposed all parties to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) which bans such germ warfare ``enact strict national criminal legislation against prohibited (biological weapons) activities with strong extradition requirements.''

He also called for establishing ``an effective United Nations procedure for investigating suspicious outbreaks or allegations of biological weapons use.''

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001

Fox reporting victim's anthrax same as that found in Daschle's letter. Other than that, no connection to previous cases found.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2001