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CNN Live At Daybreak
Target: Terrorism - Isolated Anthrax Case
Aired October 05, 2001 - 07:04 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Health officials are tracing the travels of a Florida man. They're trying to learn where he might have contracted an inhaled type of anthrax, a rare and usually deadly disease. In Washington, federal officials are calling the Florida case isolated and they're saying it has no connection with any threat of bioterrorism.
CNN's John Zarrella is in Palm Beach County, where this story begins. John.
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, that's right. We're here in Atlantis, Florida, which is a small town just south of West Palm Beach for our viewers who know this area. And what we are told this morning by health officials here at John F. Kennedy Hospital is that 63-year-old Bob Stevens remains in critical condition. He is being treated with penicillin this morning. But again, he is still in critical condition.
A couple of keys that health officials are telling us are important here is that it does not appear at this point to have anything to do with terrorism. It does not appear that this is a contagious -- he's not contagious.
But they're not taking any chances and both state and federal health officials are saying that they do believe this is an isolated case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOMMY THOMPSON, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Good afternoon.
ZARRELLA (voice-over): The news was delivered by the president's point man for the medical defense against biological weapons.
THOMPSON: The Centers for Disease Control has just confirmed the diagnosis of anthrax in a patient in a Florida hospital.
ZARRELLA: A single case of this rare infection immediately raised the question, was this a case of terrorism?
THOMPSON: It appears that this is just an isolated case. There is no evidence of terrorism. LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR FRANK BROGAN, FLORIDA: We have a team of epidemiologists both from our state public health department and from the CDC, as well as our local team, working vigorously on trying to establish exactly where or how this individual came in contact with this germ.
ZARRELLA: The patient, a 63-year-old photographer, showed up at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital near West Palm Beach early Tuesday confused, vomiting and running a fever. The emergency room ran a series of tests, and in this new heightened state of awareness, the E.R. sent a specimen to a state lab that determined the patient had suffered from inhaled anthrax.
DR. JEFFREY KOPLAN, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL: Which is unusual. We haven't had one in the U.S. for about 20 years. And it can be caused by a variety of different mechanisms, and that's what we've gone down to investigate, what was the source of exposure to anthrax for this individual.
ZARRELLA: Wherever he came in contact with the anthrax, there is one risk that can be dismissed out of hand, the risk that he passed on this infection.
KOPLAN: There is no person to person spread from this anthrax, from this organism. It's not acquired by being close to someone who has it, so other people don't have to worry about their being infected from this individual.
ZARRELLA: In the coming days, epidemiologists, disease detectives, will be trying to retrace every step of the patient to get to the source. That has been difficult to this point, because the patient has been sedated.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZARRELLA: What led them to determine that this was anthrax was that early on Wednesday they began running some other tests, thinking because of his symptoms, he might have had meningitis. They did a spinal tap. When they looked at the results of the spinal tap, of the fluid, they found what are rod like structures with spores. They sent those samples to the state labs and to the federal labs for further testing. And because state officials, state health workers have just recently completed training in the area of identifying anthrax, they very readily and quickly diagnosed that it was anthrax.
Now, officials here have talked to the man's wife. She does not show any signs or symptoms of having the anthrax. They are, of course, keeping her under observation and asking her questions as to where he might have been where he could have picked this naturally occurring anthrax, which is what they think it is, where he could have picked that up.
But right now that's where the story is at this point. The search will continue, a very intense search, to try and find out where this might have come from.
This is John Zarrella reporting live at John F. Kennedy Hospital in Atlantis, Florida.
O'BRIEN: John, before you get away, a quick question for you. There seems to be a lot of coincidences in this story. There hasn't been a case reported of anthrax in 25 years in the U.S. and the "Miami Herald" this morning is reporting that Mr. Stevens lived in relatively close proximity at one point to Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers.
Are we to make much of that?
ZARRELLA: Well, at this point it just may be unfortunate coincidence. There are also reports that well, because he lived in the Lantana area that he actually was about 40 miles from Belle Glade, which is one of the places that the pilots, the Arab pilots went to, to try and learn or to learn about crop duster airplanes. So lots of speculation coming out this morning.
One interesting note, Miles, very quickly, is that what they are also saying is that it might be that this form of anthrax actually occurs more than we realize it, but only now because of the heightened awareness and because of the training that doctors are getting that they're actually picking it out and identifying it more correctly than they might have in the past.
So, that is also a possibility. Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right, very good point there.
CNN's John Zarrella reporting from Palm Beach County.
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