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CNN Live At Daybreak

New Inhaled Anthrax Case in Washington, D.C. Postal Worker

Aired October 22, 2001 - 07:48   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.
ZAHN: And welcome back. In the nation's capital, as we mentioned earlier, a postal worker has been hospitalized with -- for a form -- an inhaled form of anthrax.

For more now -- I'm sorry, it's a little bit confusing. We do know that more than 2,000 others are being tested for possible exposure.

Now joining me right now is a man that knows an awful lot about this, Dr. Ivan Walks, who is the Chief Health Officer of the District of Columbia.

Welcome sir, good to have you with us this morning.

DR. IVAN WALKS, CHIEF HEALTH OFFICER OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Thank you. Good morning.

ZAHN: We'd love for you to clear up some of the confusion this morning Dr. Walks. How many people currently in the District of Columbia are being treated for either a skin form of anthrax or the inhaled kind?

WALKS: We have one confirmed anthrax incident that is a diagnosis in a person with anthrax in the District. We have several people on the federal side who have had their nasal swabs come back as positive for being exposed to anthrax, but we have just the one gentleman who is ill with the inhalation form, which is the one that is the most dangerous.

ZAHN: And is it your suspicion you might see more cases of that or would you have already seen it by now if that were the case?

WALKS: Not necessarily. This is a disease that we don't know a lot about. It has been extremely rare over the last many, many decades when we talk about the inhalation form of anthrax. Cutaneous anthrax not as serious, easy to treat. Wait until you see it. Go in. Get your antibiotics.

The inhaled form we really want to find early. And that's why in the District we have a very good public health story. We changed several weeks ago from diagnosis reporting, when you know what it is and the person has a diagnosis, call the public health to what we're doing now, which is symptom reporting. When someone comes in and their symptoms are suspicious or they make you think he may have one of these diseases that we're really worried about, things like anthrax, public health needs to be called right away. We begin an investigation, working closely with CDC and in this case, the postal service has been a great partner of ours right from the start.

ZAHN: OK, let's come back, if we could, to that fact that was announced late last night -- that there are five more suspected cases. How are these people being treated?

WALKS: These people are being treated as is clinically appropriate. What that means is when you walk in, your doctor looks at you, makes an initial assessment and begins treatment based on how you present. That's exactly what good health care is all about.

What we've added are really two things. One is the public health department is notified early so we can begin investigating and then we are notifying the public. We want the media to be our partners in this. We want you to know real time as much as we know so the public understands what our level of concern is and knows that we are being vigilant.

To that end, we have approximately 22 to 2300 postal workers at the Brentwood mail-handling facility in Washington, D.C. and the Maryland airmail facility, which is located near BWI airport. All of those folks are coming in for treatment and for additional screening.

The important thing is that they are receiving treatment early while our screening, which isn't what we use to tell us if they have anthrax, the screening is what we do for scientific reasons to identify an area of exposure.

ZAHN: All right, I guess we're all getting an education in this together. I wanted to share with our audience an extremely disturbing picture of the seven-month old baby boy who had contracted skin anthrax at the ABC studios in New York.

You know, this just breaks your heart to see this picture. Just to put this into perspective for us, most of the folks that you are seeing are describing much more subtle sort of symptoms -- right?

WALKS: The folks that we're seeing are describing not only more subtle, but much more concerning. The good news about the picture you just shown, is when you see someone with that sort of a lesion, it's easily diagnostic. The ulcerated area, the black sign right in the center, and it's very, very amenable to treatment.

So though the picture breaks our hearts, we're happy because that kind of illness we know exactly how to treat. The inhaled form we also know exactly how to treat, but by the time we wait for a diagnosis, those people don't have a good outcome.

This new paradigm in public health report the symptoms, investigate early, begin treatment early -- that's going to save a lot of lives. ZAHN: Well Dr. Walks, we appreciate your candor this morning and wish...

WALKS: Thank you.

ZAHN: ... you tremendous luck as the screening continues in Washington.

WALKS: We have a lot of good people working with us. Thank you.

ZAHN: Okay, wish them all luck.

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