WASHINGTON, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -A US postal employee in Washington was in serious but stable condition Sunday after being infected with inhalation anthrax, making him the ninth person to fall prey to the sometimes-deadly bacteria. (Read photo caption below)
A spokesman for the Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia said the man, an employee at the Brentwood facility where mail sent to the US Capitol complex is processed, was admitted to hospital Friday afternoon displaying flu-like symptoms.
"The patient is seriously ill but stable at the present time," infectious disease expert at the hospital, Donald Toretz said. He played down the mortality of anthrax, noting that current medical expertise meant significantly improved prospects of survival than those previously recorded.
The case is the first reported in Washington, where traces of anthrax were found last week in office buildings on both the House and Senate sides of the Capitol complex, which prompted the first-ever closure of the House of Representatives.
Twenty-eight congressional employees working in or near the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who received an anthrax-laced letter Monday, have been exposed to the bacteria but display no effects of illness.
Traces of anthrax spores were found Saturday in the Ford building's mail processing center on the House side of the Capitol complex.
A decision whether Congress would resume work Tuesday was expected later Sunday.
US Surgeon General David Satcher told reporters the Washington postal worker's case "is not yet hopeless," though he stressed "inhalation anthrax is a serious disease ... it has a very high mortality rate."
Over 2,000 employees at the city mail facility where the ill man worked, and 150 more from a postal center near the Baltimore Washington International Airport will undergo tests and receive treatment as a precaution, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams said.
The anthrax attacks have targeted media and political offices but postal workers are ancillary casualties because of their daily contact with mail containing the dangerous spores.
A photo editor at the Florida offices of The Sun tabloid died of respiratory anthrax October 5; a co-worker is being treated for the same strain. Six others are following antibiotic regimens for treatment of skin anthrax, which Satcher said was almost 100 percent curable.
PHOTO CAPTION:
U.S. Postal Service mail handler Bharathi Mamidi of East Brunswick, N.J., displays a bottle of the antibiotic Cipro she was given while being tested for anthrax at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2001, in Hamilton, N.J. A fellow worker at the Hamilton post office branch where she works has been diagnosed with skin anthrax and the facility has been closed. (AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer)
- Oct 21 8:25 PM ET