WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- The anthrax scare in the capital area spread Friday to a U.S. Supreme Court mailing facility and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was likely additional mail containing the spores is somewhere in the postal distribution system or sitting in an office.
CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, in a teleconference from Atlanta, said it was highly unlikely a State Department worker who tested positive for inhalation anthrax infection Thursday got it from cross contamination -- from anthrax spores that were spread to other letters during the mail processing process. He said to get enough spores for an infection, the worker had to have come into contact, at some point, with an anthrax letter.
"There probably are multiple mailings (of anthrax-laden letters) that have gone out," Koplan said. "There is such a (anthrax) letter somewhere that this (State Department) person was exposed to."
The CDC, in conjunction with District of Columbia's public health officials, are contacting postal sites, government agencies and private businesses downstream from the Brentwood mail facility near Capitol Hill, advising people in mailrooms to take preventive doses of the antibiotic Cipro. Environmental testing of many of these areas is ongoing as well.
Friday, U.S. Supreme Court officials said a filter taken from a remote mail site for the Supreme Court of the United States has tested positive for anthrax. Court employees refused to identify the site, but it is known to be in the Maryland suburbs. Court employees were to be given antibiotics and the building closed for further testing.
"We learned this morning that a filter taken from the Supreme Court's off-site mail inspection warehouse on Monday night tested positive for anthrax (Friday). We have no evidence of any contamination in the Supreme Court building. Results of testing of our building completed by the Centers for Disease Control on Sunday were all negative. No court personnel have shown any signs of being exposed to or having developed any form of anthrax," a statement said.
Trace amounts of anthrax spores also were found in the mail-handling areas of the CIA and Walter Reed Army Research Institute, as well as additional sites in the Senate Hart office building.
The anthrax being found in the Washington area traces back to the Brentwood mail sorting facility, where 14 areas have tested positive for it. Two postal workers from Brentwood died of inhalation anthrax infection earlier this week and two remain hospitalized with the disease. At least seven others are hospitalized with suspicious symptoms.
President Bush, in signing anti-terrorism legislation Friday, said more than 200 postal facilities along the East Coast, including some 100 in the Washington area, are undergoing testing for anthrax.
"Our country is grateful for the courage our Postal Service has shown," Bush said.
The anthrax scare began when a spore-laden letter handled at Brentwood was sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., whose staff opened it Oct. 15 at his Hart building offices. Daschle said Thursday night additional spores were found in an air-conditioning filter on the ninth floor and a stairwell between the eighth and ninth floors.
"The experts say this is neither a surprise nor a concern," he said.
Anthrax also was found earlier in the Hart mailroom and near a freight elevator on the opposite side of the building from Daschle's office.
Anthrax also has been found at the Ford office building and Daschle said in all, more than 6,000 swabs of people who may have come in contact with anthrax have been tested but the only positive tests are the 28 staffers and Capitol Police officers from Hart originally diagnosed as exposed to anthrax shortly after the letter was received.
Koplan said there could be instances of cross contamination of mail but the CDC had no way to discern them.
"If it's positive for anthrax in culture, that's all we know," he said.
He added, however, the risk of infection from anthrax spores piggybacked on unrelated mail or to other mailrooms is very small because there would not be enough spores present.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday the anthrax found in the Daschle letter was sophisticated enough that only someone with the skills of a doctorate in microbiology, working in a well-equipped lab, could have produced it. He did not, however, rule out the possibility the anthrax was state sponsored.
"The good news is that it is not necessarily state sponsored but the bad news is there is a broader universe of people out there who could produce it," said Fleisher.
At the Walter Reed Institute for Research in Silver Spring, Md., spokesman Dr. Ron Goor told United Press International just one spore was found in a mail distribution room.
"The room is closed and we are currently testing the facility and the people who worked there," he said. "Those employees have been given prophylactic drugs."
At the CIA in Langley, Va., spokesman Tom Chrispell said only one of 31 areas tested was positive for anthrax and it was a "trace amount."
The State Department said Friday a second man being examined for possible anthrax is not infected.
"Appropriate precautions have been taken," a State Department official said. "There is no longer a suspicion of anthrax for the second case."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher announced Thursday a dockworker from the department's mail-handling facility in Sterling, Va., had been diagnosed with inhalation anthrax.
The Sterling facility receives mail from the Brentwood postal unit in Washington, where two mail workers died from inhalation anthrax earlier this week.
All employees at the Sterling mail-handling facility were put on a 10-day prescription for Cipro, the antibiotic specifically prescribed for anthrax. The Sterling facility was closed, Boucher said.
The anthrax investigation also continued in South Florida. Crews in moon suits with oxygen tanks moved through the American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton, looking for anthrax spores that killed one employee, infected another and exposed at least one more.
The workers swabbed surfaces with cloth swabs and placed them in a plastic bag for testing. The swabs are being sent to a laboratory set up in Lantana, Fla., by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. The tests will take 18 hours for each sample.
American Media is looking for a new home. A broker handling the search said the firm, which publishes supermarket tabloids, is seeking a five- to seven-year lease. Company officials said this week they are considering moving back into the old building, but it may not be ready for years.
The anthrax scare began at AMI when Bob Stevens, a 63-year-old photo editor, died of inhalation anthrax on Oct. 5.
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(With Kelly Hearn, Mike Kirkland and Eli J. Lake in Washington, and Les Kjos in Miami)
