A baby on Monday tested positive for anthrax after visiting ABC News in New York, ratcheting up nationwide fear over the deadly bacterium which was also detected in the office of the US Senate majority leader.
Blood tests on the seven-month-old boy, the son of an ABC staffer, showed the child had contracted skin anthrax while a 73-year-old employee of American Media Inc. in Florida was found to have the more serious respiratory form.
A total of four people in the United States have now been confirmed to have anthrax, while nine other people have been exposed to the bacterium but have not developed the illness.
Earlier President George W. Bush revealed that preliminary tests found traces of anthrax in a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and that staff members who handled the package were being treated with antibiotics.
Asked if he believed suspected terror mastermind Osama bin Laden could be behind the spate of anthrax-laced packages being intercepted across the country, Bush said: "I wouldn't put it past him, but we have no hard evidence."
ABC News President David Westin told reporters it was believed the boy contracted skin anthrax during a visit lasting several hours on September 28.
"I would emphasise this is cutaneous anthrax...that is of course the much less dangerous one, the one that can be treated with antibiotics," he told a news conference.
"My understanding is that the child has responded well and the prognosis is excellent," he said.
Westin said no other employees had shown any signs of contracting the disease and that so far no traces of anthrax had been found at ABC headquarters in New York.
Westin said there was no evidence to prove the baby had been infected with anthrax at the ABC building, although he said it was "quite a coincidence" following the confirmed case of anthrax at broadcaster NBC on Friday.
He also said there were no immediate plans to test ABC employees for exposure to the bacterium.
"Right now we have no reported symptoms of any sort, for cutanous anthrax, which the officials indicate we should have had by now if people were infected," said Westin.
The three other people who developed the disease this month were employees of media companies, triggering fears of a concerted bioterrorist campaign.
A photo editor died on October 5 from respiratory anthrax at American Media Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, and an assistant to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw is currently recovering after contracting the milder skin form of the disease.
Health officials in Florida also said Monday that a second person -- 73-year-old Ernesto Blanco -- had now tested positive for the disease.
Blanco was previously one of seven people at AMI who had tested positive for exposure to anthrax but who had not developed the illness. A detective and two laboratory technicians investigating the NBC case in New York have also been exposed to the bacterium.
New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said that following the new scare linked to ABC checks would be done on all major media outlets in New York.
"We will be doing environmental surveys in and around the mail rooms just as a precautionary measure...to determine whether there is any indication there has been contamination in those areas," he said.
FBI agents leading the probe into the anthrax alert have so far said they have no evidence to link them to the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.
But Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said it was clear those exposed to the deadly anthrax bacteria were victims of bioterror and the evidence is pointing towards an orchestrated campaign.
( China Daily 10/16/2001)
