Fourth Anthrax Death Remains Mystery
W A S H I N G T O N, Nov. 1 -- Authorities said today the anthrax that killed a New York woman is "indistinguishable" from the bacteria contained in several contaminated letters found in the city and in Washington, but they are still baffled as to how she was infected by it.
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"It is what we call 'indistinguishable' from all of the others," Dr. Stephen Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said of the strain of anthrax recovered from the body of Kathy Nguyen, a 61-year-old hospital worker who on Wednesday became the fourth person in the United States to die of inhaled anthrax in the last month.
"All of them have been basically indistinguishable."
An employee at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, Nguyen was the first individual in the country to contract the bacterial infection who did not work at a mail facility or have ties to a media organization. It was also the first known case of inhalation anthrax in New York.
There were few new clues for investigators trying to retrace Nguyen's life in the days and weeks leading up to her death in a search for the source of her infection.
"They got nothing," a law enforcement official involved in the criminal probe told ABCNEWS, adding that investigators were trying to determine whether the woman simply "stumbled into the source."
Other sources tell ABCNEWS the working theory of federal investigators is in fact that neither Nguyen nor the hospital were targeted, but that she was infected by anthrax that leaked out in a postal sorting facility, cross-contaminating a piece of mail later delivered to her home or work.
Nguyen worked in a basement stockroom which, until a recent renovation, was located in close proximity to the mailroom.
No anthrax has been detected on the woman's clothes or mail and preliminary environmental tests from the Nguyen's Bronx apartment and the hospital where she worked have also come back negative.
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