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NY anthrax strain same as Florida's

The strain of anthrax bacteria that killed a Vietnamese immigrant in New York is "indistinguishable" from the bacteria sent to a US senator and various media offices, authorities said as they struggled to find those responsible for recent germ warfare attacks.

The US Supreme Court building, closed for a week after anthrax was found in a basement mailroom, was set to begin reopening yesterday. But anthrax contamination was found on Thursday in four US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mailrooms in offices outside Washington.

In addition, the Bush administration appointed a leading bioterrorism expert to head a new office charged with coordinating the national response to public health emergencies, including the spate of attacks involving letters laced with the powdery anthrax spores sent by US mail.

In New York, investigators sought clues about how Kathy Nguyen, 61, encountered the bacteria that took her life, making her the fourth person in the US to die in the past month after inhaling anthrax spores. The hospital stockroom employee died on Wednesday at a Manhattan hospital.

"As far as the organism itself, we did have a number of cultures from the patient herself before she died, and those specimens have been looked at ... and it is what we call indistinguishable from all of the others," said Stephen Ostroff, an epidemiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is investigating anthrax cases in New York and New Jersey.

The seeming match of the anthrax involved in the Nguyen case and in letters sent by unknown perpetrators to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in Washington and media offices in Florida and New York could indicate that the dangerous germs originated from the same source, officials believe.

Sixteen cases of anthrax have been confirmed in the US during the current outbreak. Inhalational anthrax also has killed Florida tabloid newspaper photo editor Bob Stevens, 63, and Washington postal workers Thomas Morris, 55, and Joseph Curseen, 47.

Police, the FBI and public health investigators have tested the hospital where Nguyen worked and the Bronx apartment where she lived, but have not yet found the source of her infection. What is confounding investigators is the fact that she had no apparent connection to the government and media targets of the mailed anthrax attacks or mail handling.

New York Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said nasal swabs taken from 28 of Nguyen's co-workers who worked in close proximity to her came back negative. Officials were awaiting results on tests of the hospital environment.

In the latest discovery of anthrax contamination in government offices, preliminary tests detected anthrax in four FDA mailrooms in the federal agency's buildings in Rockville, Maryland, north of Washington. FDA spokesman Lawrence Bachorik said people who worked in the mailrooms were being given antibiotics as a precautionary measure.

The FDA, which regulates pharmaceuticals, most foods, medical devices and other products, has closed all of its Rockville-area mailrooms until they can be decontaminated.
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