Last Updated

06 Dec 2002

Source: Washington Post, October 26, 2001.

Va. Case Alters Anthrax Equation

Hospitalized Sorter for State Dept. Handled Mail From D.C. Facility

By Steve Twomey and Avram Goldstein, Washington Post Staff Writers

A State Department contract worker in Sterling (case 20) who handles mail shipped from the District's processing center has the inhaled form of anthrax, officials announced yesterday, making him the first person locally to contract the disease who does not work at the city's Brentwood Road facility.

The new case, the fifth of inhalation anthrax in the area, suggests that either a second contaminated letter passed through Brentwood in addition to one sent to Capitol Hill, or that spores escaping from that letter dusted nearby mail as it was routed to other destinations, such as Sterling.

That processing center, which receives bulk shipments from Brentwood Road NE to sort and dispatch to the State Department downtown and diplomatic outposts worldwide, was closed immediately yesterday, joining an expanding list of mail centers and government offices forced by anthrax terrorism to cease operations.

The worker who has been infected with anthrax handled mail processed through Brentwood as well as correspondence from abroad. Federal health officials reacted to the confirmed new case by ordering antibiotic treatment for at least 250 State Department mail handlers in Sterling and the District and an unknown number working at 220 posts worldwide, yet another expansion of the universe of thousands of Americans now taking precautionary drugs.

In speeches to the U.S. Conference of Mayors here, Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft defended the government's performance, calling the investigation of anthrax letters here and elsewhere and the Sept. 11 attacks the biggest in history.

"And we'll beat these guys," Ridge said.

Along the East Coast yesterday, the number of tested postal workers in Washington alone reached 7,644, a second New Jersey postal worker was hospitalized with what might be inhalation anthrax, and the New York City health department announced that a second employee of NBC (case 6) had skin anthrax stemming from a tainted letter sent to anchor Tom Brokaw.

Scores of sites in and around Washington were being tested because they usually receive mail directly from Brentwood -- including major private businesses and all federal mailrooms, said Deborah K. Willhite, senior vice president of the Postal Service.

One such test, at a Silver Spring annex of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, found a single spore of anthrax bacteria, and that was enough to shut down the facility for decontamination yesterday. Six mailroom employees at the annex, which is in the Forest Glen area of Silver Spring, were tested for anthrax exposure, said Jim Stueve, a spokesman.

So far, though, there are no reported cases of cross-contaminated mail that has passed through the federal postal system and arrived at any residence or business.

At an afternoon news conference, Ivan C.A. Walks, the District's director of health, said the investigation had become one of evolving information and assumptions, as officials struggle to track down all the people and locations at risk from an unknown number of dangerous letters passing through critical nodes of the nation's huge postal system.

"Every day, we reassess where we are," Walks said.

Last night, the Sterling employee was listed in guarded condition at the Winchester (Va.) Medical Center, where he had gone Wednesday afternoon complaining of what have become the well-known symptoms of inhalation anthrax -- "flu-like" aches, fever and cough.

The 59-year-old man (case 20), whose name was not released, works for a company that processes mail at the Diplomatic Mail and Pouch Facility, where about 90 workers process 130,000 pieces of mail each day, according to a State Department Web site. Although the worker handles mail arriving from the District's main center, he never visits the center, Walks said, unlike the four Brentwood workers who contracted inhalation anthrax. Two have died (case 15 and case 16), and two remain hospitalized (case 14 and case 17).

Ninety percent of the mail from Brentwood for the State Department passes through Sterling, including mail to the secretary of state, spokesman Richard Boucher said last night. Most of the mail from Sterling -- 80 percent -- then goes on to embassies. The rest is delivered to the State Department in Foggy Bottom as well as several annexes in the Washington area.

Additionally, six State Department locations receive mail directly from Brentwood, bypassing Sterling. Two unspecified offices at Foggy Bottom also receive mail directly from Brentwood. A smaller quantity of mail does not go through either Brentwood or Sterling.

A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Lisa Swenarski, said the agency was scrambling to determine how the Sterling employee was infected. "There is the possibility of cross-contamination with the Daschle letter," Swenarski said, referring to a letter mailed from New Jersey that was processed at Brentwood on its way to Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.). Or, she said, there is "the possibility of another letter" with anthrax spores that went through Brentwood to Sterling.

Joel Selanikio, a CDC official assigned to the bioterrorism office in Washington, agreed it was "highly suggestive this would have come through the Brentwood station." He said it was impossible to reach conclusions about the nature or amount of the anthrax that may have reached the State Department but added, "It doesn't require a very large amount to stick to an envelope and get downstream."

Anyone who works at or recently visited the Sterling facility should begin taking Cipro, the drug most often used to ward off anthrax, said David Goodfriend, Loudoun County's health director. The CDC has not decided, however, whether all State Department employees in Foggy Bottom should take antibiotics.

"We will be working with the State Department to see what needs to be done there," said Patrick J. Meehan, an environmental medicine expert for the CDC.

At the State Department last evening, some employees waiting for buses and rides on Virginia Avenue NW said they had heard about the anthrax case through official channels, but others had learned about it only through the media. There were rumors that some downtown employees were already taking Cipro and reports that all incoming mail had been stopped.

"I kind of figured it would get to the State Department sooner or later," said employee Sherice Fair, 22, noting the anthrax scares on Capitol Hill and at the White House. "It's gotten everywhere else."

Meanwhile, mail delivery in the District remained subpar because the 1 million pieces of mail that normally go through the Brentwood Road facility -- now a crime scene -- must travel to and from city homes and businesses through suburban processing centers.

Patricia Johnson, chapter president of the American Postal Workers Union, said that workers from Brentwood who have been reassigned to suburban postal facilities are in some cases being treated as outcasts by those permanently assigned to those locations.

"They're telling managers, 'Can we catch anthrax from those workers?' " Johnson said. And in many cases, she said, postal managers do not know enough about anthrax to answer the questions.

Employees at a Gaithersburg postal facility now processing mail bound for the District will be given Cipro if they want it, Montgomery County officials said. Although CDC officials have tested the facility for evidence of anthrax spores, results were not yet available. There is no indication so far of a problem at the Suburban Maryland Processing and Distribution Center.

Even so, three employees have checked into hospitals complaining of flu-like symptoms, although there is no confirmation they have been exposed to anthrax spores, said Lynn Frank, the county's chief of public health services. About 100 employees walked out on Tuesday night after one worker found a suspicious letter addressed to Daschle. Officials later said the letter did not contain dangerous substances.

In New Jersey, state epidemiologist Eddy Bresnitz said the second postal worker suspected of having inhalation anthrax (case 13) was admitted to a hospital within the last 24 hours. Bresnitz said the patient was employed at the Hamilton Township processing center, through which the Brokaw and Daschle letters passed, along with a letter sent to the New York Post.

New Jersey health authorities have identified three cases of skin anthrax (case 3, case 4 and case 12), one of which is unconfirmed (case 3), and now two possible cases  of inhaled anthrax (case 11 and case 13) among postal workers, all but one of them mail handlers at Hamilton Township.

Acting New Jersey Health Commissioner George T. DiFerdinando said doctors had not yet isolated the anthrax bacterium in their first suspected inhaled anthrax patient, but she "exhibits all the clinical symptoms" and had a positive blood test. That patient is in stable condition and improving, DiFerdinando said.

Bresnitz said officials had decided to extend the Cipro treatment of the Hamilton postal employees from 10 to 60 days because the contamination appeared in so many parts of the building.

A similar decision on whether to extend treatment among the thousands of Capitol Hill employees who were tested last week is expected today.

In New York, the announcement of another skin anthrax case related to the letter sent to Brokaw brought to five the number of skin anthrax patients, all linked to news companies. The focus of attention is on Manhattan's Morgan Station, a mail-sorting facility that processed the letters to Brokaw and the New York Post.

The Department of Health and the CDC offered antibiotics to up to 7,000 workers from Morgan Station and five other Manhattan post offices as a precautionary measure. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday afternoon that more than 1,700 people had been given the antibiotics. Part of the Morgan Station facility was shut down yesterday after four bar code mail-sorting machines tested positive for unspecified "bacteria," according to Postal Service spokesman Dan Quinn.

Staff writers Justin Blum, Ceci Connolly, Helen Dewar, David A. Fahrenthold, Steven Ginsberg, Guy Gugliotta, Michael Laris, Jennifer Lenhart, Phuong Ly, R.H. Melton, Susan Okie, Dale Russakoff, Alan Sipress, Jamie Stockwell and Shankar Vedantam contributed to this report.