An anthrax-wary world entered its second week of tattered nerves yesterday, as fear of suspicious powder rattled embassies in Malaysia, halted mail services in Denmark and led to the evacuation of a high school in Japan.
President Chen Shui-bian (
"Our country absolutely can't take this threat too lightly," Chen said yesterday after announcing plans to step up emergency drills and stockpile vaccines. "We must be prepared for every possible threat."
Global jitters worsened after tests discovered traces of anthrax in white powder leaking from a letter at a Bahamas post office, and doctors diagnosed a new case of the deadly disease in the US.
The Bahamas incident was the third case of parcel-packed anthrax outside the US, and the second since Friday when a contaminated letter turned up in Argentina.
Anthrax fears have spread since US health officials sealed off a south Florida building Oct. 8, the day a mailroom worker was found to be exposed to anthrax and three days after another worker died from the disease.
Of the hundreds of suspicious packets surfacing worldwide, most have so far been ruled false alarms. But authorities have little choice but to check each scare, although Thailand's Public Health Ministry said it will stop reporting unproven cases of suspect letters -- in a bid to calm a fretful public.
In Finland and Denmark the countries' main mail sorting centers closed when white powder was found leaking from letters. The Copenhagen shutdown delayed delivery of 75,000 letters, while the Finnish workers were rushed to disinfecting showers.
Neighboring Sweden has pulled 142 suspicious items from the mail -- with the 57 packets so far tested all proving false alarms.
In Japan, 900 high-school students were sent home after a powder-filled envelope was mailed to their school.
Meanwhile, police in the northern city of Sapporo were investigating white powder scattered on the bathroom floor of a government office. It aroused suspicion when a security guard said the building's janitors only use liquid cleansers. Japanese police suspect pranks in both cases.
Just to be on the safe side, workers at the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur were given antibiotics after the building received a letter with a powdery substance.
Australia's diplomatic mission in Kuala Lumpur also reported receiving an envelope containing a suspicious powder.
The US anthrax scare bubbled over the country's borders last week, when a Kenyan doctor received an anthrax-laced letter from Atlanta.
Since then, a Washington postal worker has fallen "gravely ill" from inhalation anthrax, a rare and lethal form of the disease, and five others are sick with suspicious symptoms.
The diagnosed man, who was not identified, is the third person in the US to come down with the most serious form of the disease, where anthrax spores enter the respiratory system and lodge deep in the lungs.
Six others, including two postal workers in New Jersey, have been infected with an easily treatable form that is contracted through the skin.
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