Posted On: Thursday, January 5th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Ashcroft said the FBI is “taking the matter very seriously…[but] on the basis of the investigation, we haven’t ruled out anything at this time.”
A few days ago, officials were downplaying the first anthrax case as an isolated event.
But experts say the odds of two co-workers contracting anthrax are minuscule. “It would be highly unlikely, in my opinion, that two people who work in one building would be colonized with anthrax with another exposure than human intent,” says Judy English, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
Testifying today before the Senate, Dr. Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association, says he thinks the origins of the anthrax in Florida are “criminal.”
English, who led APIC’s bioterrorism task force, says the initially cautious stance of health and law enforcement officials wasn’t misguided. “They were trying to not incite any undue panic in the public,” she says. But after the second case, the probability of a planned outbreak had to be considered.
English, head of infection control at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, says there’s no way to know except for waiting whether there will be more anthrax cases in Florida. And if there are, only time will tell if the government is prepared to cope with a bigger outbreak. “I don’t believe we are ready to deal with a massive anthrax release, but we are a whole lot more ready this Tuesday than we were last Friday,” she says.
People can be infected with anthrax three ways, through the skin (usually via cuts or other breaks), the gastric system (usually by eating infected meat) and the airways. All can be cured with antibiotics, but inhaled anthrax is the rarest and most serious kind, killing 90 percent of its victims. Symptoms of infection usually appear within about a week of exposure, but the organism can incubate for as long as 60 days.
Until this month only 18 cases of inhaled anthrax — two of which involved lab workers — had been reported in this country in the last 100 years, including one earlier this year in Texas. The disease, which causes rapidly descending flu-like symptoms, followed by pneumonia and meningitis, can be acquired through contact with the hides, wool or other body parts of infected livestock, particularly sheep and goats.
At least 17 countries have biological weapons programs, though it’s not clear how many have anthrax in their arsenals, according to an analysis of the issue two years ago done for the American Medical Association. Iraq has acknowledged turning the germ into a weapon.
While anthrax is difficult to prepare and convert into a weapon, it’s not beyond the reach of someone with sophistication in biology, experts say.
John Pape, an epidemiologist and bioterror expert at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in Denver, says that although skin-borne anthrax isn’t so rare in the West, a single case of inhaled infection “would send up a red flag” in any state. “Despite the reassurances [from the government], you can be sure there was a very intensive investigation” after the first patient was diagnosed in Florida, he says.
Colorado officials have been meeting regularly since last week to hash out their own response plan should an anthrax outbreak occur there, Pape says. “We’ve been meeting throughout the weekend to discuss options, including upping surveillance” at hospitals, coroners’ labs, and doctors’ offices, he says.
In addition to monitoring possible new cases of anthrax, public health workers in Florida must also figure out what to do about the American Media building where the bacteria was found. The germ is quite hardy, capable of surviving extremes of hot and cold, Pape says. But thorough decontamination can make the workplace safe again. “I don’t think that they’re going to have to lock the building up and torch it, but it may take some time,” he says.
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Tags: anthrax, biology, pneumonia
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