Damage from the anthrax-by-mail attack has spiraled, with two postal workers dead of what officials suspect was inhalation anthrax and two more hospitalized. Officials were monitoring nine others with suspicious symptoms.
The US Postal Service defended a delay in looking for anthrax at the city's central facility, where the victims worked, and considered new precautions for workers nationwide.
Testing for anthrax continued Monday at Washington's Brentwood postal facility, a week after a tainted letter first appeared on Capitol Hill.
Health officials said they would expand testing to 36 post offices across the city that received mail from Brentwood, as investigators tried to pinpoint any other sites contaminated with anthrax.
Authorities also said postal workers citywide should begin taking antibiotics, with the number of people prescribed preventive antibiotics nearing 10,000 in Washington alone.
As the bioterrorist toll mounted, postal officials planned to meet yesterday with experts at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to consider new precautions for postal workers across the country, including wearing gloves and masks as they handle mail.
"Like other symbols of American freedom and power, the mail and our employees have become a target of terrorists," Postmaster General John Potter said. "We must take extraordinary steps to protect them both."
Two postal workers have died -- one Sunday, one Monday -- and officials strongly suspect they were sick with inhalation anthrax, the most serious form of the disease. Another two men, already diagnosed, were in serious condition in a northern Virginia hospital.
There now have been three confirmed cases of inhalation anthrax, with two more likely, plus six cases of the less serious skin form of the disease.
It was a week ago when the anthrax scare hit Washington with the arrival of a powder-filled letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office. No one on Capitol Hill has become ill, though more than 5,000 have been tested and office buildings remain closed.
Officials began tracing the letter back through the mail system and found anthrax in a Senate mail room. Moving one step back, they initially found none of the bacteria in an offsite congressional mail facility where mail goes just before arriving in the Senate.
Based on these initial results, health experts concluded testing was not needed at the Brentwood facility, which handles most of the city's mail, including letters for Congress. Later, however, anthrax was detected in the offsite facility, and over the weekend the first of the Brentwood workers checked into the hospital.
On Monday, officials defended their decision in the face of angry employees. "I think they moved quickly, as quickly as they could," said Tom Ridge, the nation's director of homeland security.
Many employees disagreed.
"They closed the House building down while we were in there inhaling it," said Abraham Odom of Oxen Hill, Maryland, who sorts small packages at the Brentwood facility. "That's not right. That's not fair. This stuff is supposed to be deadly."
Investigators still don't know the source of the anthrax, or whether it is related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Ridge repeatedly tied the anthrax attack to the war US forces are waging in Afghanistan. "There's one war, but there are two fronts," he said.
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