Fourth Anthrax Death Remains Mystery
W A S H I N G T O N, Nov. 1, 2001 -- 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.
MORE ANTHRAX-RELATED NEWS: • New ‘Hot Spots’ in D.C., Midwest
"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.
"At this point we don't see any evidence of any anthrax," said New York Health Commissioner Neal Cohen.
Officials had hoped the mysterious case might lead them to source of the bioterror attacks and that perhaps Nguyen was exposed because the perpetrators were somewhere in her neighborhood.
Nine other people in the United States have been diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, including four postal workers and an employee at a State Department mail facility in Washington, two postal workers in New Jersey and two employees at a tabloid publishing company in Florida. Three of them have also died.
• New ‘Hot Spots’ in D.C., Midwest
The number of known anthrax "hot spots" in the United States climbed as authorities announced the discovery of the bacteria in four new government buildings near Washington and two postal facilities in the Midwest.
The Food and Drug Administration disclosed today that three of its buildings, plus an off-site mail processing facility in the Rockville, Md., area have tested "presumptive positive" for the presence of anthrax spores, pushing the number of federal buildings with so-called anthrax hot spots to more than 20.
State officials announced a day earlier that anthrax had been detected at a postal facility in Kansas City, Mo., and at a postal equipment service site in Indianapolis — the first discoveries of the bacteria in the country outside the East Coast.
Overseas, anthrax was found in a State Department mail bag sent to the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania. Anthrax was discovered last week in a mail pouch shipped to the U.S. Embassy in Lima, Peru.
In all of the new cases of contamination, the bacteria are believed to have spread from the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, where an anthrax-laced letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office from Trenton, N.J., is known to have been processed.
The Kansas City facility received tainted mail shipped from Brentwood and the Indianapolis site received a piece of postal equipment from Brentwood that had been shipped there for repair. Much of the mail that comes into the FDA buildings and the State Department is first processed at the Brentwood site.
FBI investigators in the nation's capital, meanwhile, have begun searching through mail delivered to Capitol Hill around the time the Daschle letter arrived for any additional contaminated or suspicious letters.
And doctors and hospitals across the country have been advised by federal health authorities to be on alert for further cases of anthrax infection and to use a "high index of suspicion" with cases of severe respiratory illness.
"This is new. We have not faced a bioterrorist attack before," Surgeon General David Satcher said Wednesday night on CNN's Larry King Live. "Everybody should be on high alert."