A 61-year-old Manhattan hospital worker has died from inhalational anthrax, the fourth victim from the disease in America this month, ABC News reported on yesterday.
The 61-year-old woman worked in a storage supply room in the basement of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital which until a few days ago was housed with the mailroom.
No suspicious letter has been found and authorities have not found any traces of anthrax where she worked.
The hospital was closed at least for the day, as results were awaited from the environmental samples taken in the areas where the woman had worked or was likely to have passed through.
Ten of some 40 samples taken at the hospital have returned negative. Results from the remaining samples, as well as from samples taken at the woman's Bronx home, have not yet been released.
All staff, patients and visitors who have spent at least an hour at the hospital since Oct. 11, two weeks before the patient first began showing symptoms, were urged to go to nearby Lennox Hill Hospital to collect antibiotics as a precautionary measure.
Officials estimated some 2,000 people should respond to the advice.
Steve Ostroff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that the new case was of particular concern "because it doesn't fit the pattern" of links to postal workers, politicians or the news media in the bioterror attack that has hit the US, claiming three lives to date.
A possible link, however, is that the woman worked in a basement supply room that was "jointly housed with the mail room up until a few days ago," New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said.
He added, however, that "there's no indication of a [contaminated] letter yet."
Three postal workers are infected in New Jersey. It is possible that they were infected after handling anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and the New York Post.
Since the anthrax scare started with the October 5 death of a photo editor in Florida, two postal workers in Washington have died and another 12 people have been confirmed infected with the disease.
Traces of anthrax have also been found at the main post office in West Palm Beach, Florida, authorities said Tuesday.
The discovery brings to five the number of post offices in the southeastern state where anthrax spores have been found.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats