WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- House and Senate office buildings will remain closed Monday but the Capitol will be open for legislative business, officials said Sunday, as anthrax tests were ordered for more than 2,100 postal service workers in the Washington, D.C. area following the diagnosis of inhalation anthrax in a postal worker.
Congressional office buildings have been closed since Thursday while security officials do a sweep for anthrax spores. Anthrax has been found in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. in the Senate Hart Office Building, in the Hart mailroom, the mailroom of the House Ford Office Building and another postal site.
"We are taking this one day at a time," Capitol Police Lt. Dan Nichols said. He added Senate and House leadership met Sunday and decided the Capitol would be open and the "nation's legislative business will continue."
Nichols said the office buildings would remain closed until "definitive" scientific evidence showed no signs of anthrax.
D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams said the postal worker infected, whose name was not released, was "gravely ill." The survival rate for inhalation or pulmonary anthrax infection is extremely low once symptoms appear but the man was reported to be alert and watching football on television Sunday. Officials at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va., said his condition was serious but stable.
The only death linked to the recent series of anthrax incidents in the United States was due to the same type of lung infection.
"The literature talks about a high mortality for this disease. I don't know if that's the case in a country with earlier and better diagnosis and treatment," said Dr. Donald Poretz of Fairfax Inova.
He said doctors were considering giving the man a second antibiotic, clindamycin, which some studies have shown is helpful in situations of severe infection where toxins are produced in the body.
"Just like any other person in the hospital, you have to watch him on a day by day basis," Poretz told United Press International.
Dr. Ivan Walks, the chief health officer for the District, said the man checked into the hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms Friday. Because of the threat of anthrax exposure, additional blood cultures were ordered and on Sunday it was determined the man, who has been sick since Oct. 17, was infected.
Williams said the District's Health Department was working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to contact people who worked with the victim at the U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood facility -- a main sorting office in the Washington area -- and others who work in an airmail center near Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The workers would be asked to report for tests Sunday and Monday.
Lelia Abrar, a Community Relations spokeswoman for the city government, told UPI the postal worker is assumed to have handled the letter or letters sent to Congress containing anthrax spores.
More than 4,000 people have already been tested in connection with the finding of anthrax spores in congressional office buildings near the U.S. Capitol.
"We are opening an evaluation and treatment center for all individuals who work at the Brentwood Center," said Abrar. "Everyone who works at that facility will be tested today and will be given antibiotics on the spot."
The workers will receive a nasal swab test and a prepackaged set of antibiotics as a precautionary measure. If there is a confirmation of the presence of anthrax they will be called back for more antibiotics, she said.
On another investigation front, the New York Post appears to have received two letters contaminated with anthrax. The Post reported Sunday a second letter containing anthrax had been found at the newspaper's offices.
The Post had begun segregating letters after an anthrax-laced letter was sent to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw. When Post Editorial Page Assistant Johanna Huden tested positive for cutaneous anthrax on Friday, police asked for the segregated letters and found the one reported Sunday. This letter contained powder that tested positive for the bacteria.
Huden said, however, the letter given to police was not the one she opened. The letter found by police was postmarked from Trenton, N.J., as were ones sent to Brokaw and to Daschle. The addresses on all three letters had similar handwriting and contained the same threat, said the Post - ""Death to America, Death to Israel. Allah is Great."
U.S. Surgeon-General David Satcher said on Sunday the strains of anthrax studied so far were very similar, suggesting, but not guaranteeing, they came from a single source.
Another focus of the anthrax investigation is in New Jersey, where two U.S. Postal Service letter carriers tested positive for the skin form of anthrax and a third tested positive for exposure. At least one report also indicated the third person had cutaneous anthrax infection and a fourth had been exposed, but that was not confirmed Sunday. One of those victims worked as a mail sorter in the Hamilton, N.J., post office from which anthrax-tainted letters had been mailed to Daschle and NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.
In all, at least nine people have been diagnosed with anthrax infection -- in New York, Florida, Washington, D.C. and New Jersey. Three -- two in Florida and one in Washington -- have come down with the more deadly inhaled form, while the rest have the type that is contracted through cuts or abrasions on the skin. Robert Stevens, 63, the photo editor for American Media's Sun tabloid in Boca Raton, Fla., died of inhaled anthrax infection Oct. 5 and remains the only fatality. His co-worker, Ernesto Blanco, 73, was hospitalized with a respiratory illness that later was determined to be anthrax infection. He is expected to recover. The Washington postal worker is the third inhaled anthrax case. Some three dozen additional people have been exposed to anthrax but have not developed an infection.
(With reporting by Rick Tomkins in Fairfax and Dee Ann Divis in Washington)
