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American Morning

Health Official Discusses Latest Anthrax Case

Aired November 21, 2001 - 09:07   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The latest case of inhalation anthrax adds Connecticut to the list of places in the United States were anthrax is being investigated. The Centers for Disease Control confirms that an elderly woman from the town of Oxford has the deadliest form of the disease, inhalation anthrax, and they're baffled as to how she got it.

CNN's Michael Okwu checks in now from a hospital in Derby, Connecticut, the hospital where the woman is being treated -- Michael.

MICHAEL OKWU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, hello.

Hospital officials are expected to brief the media moments from now. We understand in five to ten minutes, officials will come out and, hopefully, give us the latest on this status of 94-year-old patient.

We know the results of conclusive tests taken by the CDC were sent to this hospital at about 4:30 this morning, and those tests do confirm that the 94-year-old patient does have up inhalation anthrax.

This is the second baffling case for authorities in as many months, the first one being 61-year-old Kathy Nguyen, a hospital worker in New York who died last month.

Gov. Rowland says that this case is baffling for authorities in Connecticut. He called it an anomaly. This is what he had to say about it earlier this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ROWLAND (R), CONNECTICUT: They're similar in that they are both puzzling. The hospital worker in New York at least traveled, had been in public transportation, and had been out in the public. At 94 years old, this resident has not been out of house much, so it will be easy to trace what she has done over the last two weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OKWU: Authorities have sealed off her home in Oxford, which is a small town of some 9,000 people in southwestern Connecticut. They are trying to talk to relatives there, and friends and neighbors, essentially to try to retrace her steps -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thank you very much, Michael Okwu, checking in with us from Oxford, Connecticut.

Once again, we'll be going back live to that hospital in Derby, Connecticut, once that press conference gets under way. We will get the very latest on this woman's condition.

This latest case of anthrax brings the total number of confirmed anthrax cases nationwide to 18. Here are the figures: four deaths from inhalation anthrax, seven cases of inhalation infections, and seven cases of skin anthrax.

The big question is just how is this new case different from all of those?

Joining us is Dr. Ivan Walks. He is chief health officer for the District of Columbia, and he is director of the District's Department of Health. He's been a frequent guest on our program since we've first seen these anthrax cases surfacing.

Doctor, thank you much for taking time today to talk with us about this.

DR. IVAN WALKS, DIRECTOR, D.C. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH: You're welcome.

HARRIS: In the wake of the few reports that we've been able to cull together in the last few hours about this case, what are your initial thoughts about how this may have actually happened?

WALKS: My initial thought is that speculation about how this could have happened is really better not done and left to law enforcement. I think what's important for us to recognize is that once again someone has tried to harm, and once again, the medical detectives on the front line, the new first responders, have done a good job of identifying this case and giving this woman a fighting chance.

HARRIS: I know we don't want to speculate here and that's something you definitely want to stay away from, but there are just so many different gaping holes in this particular story. This woman not working or anywhere near any of these media offices where these anthrax letters have been sent to, she hasn't been in Washington, that we're aware of, and we've seen letters show up there in the Senate building there. We don't necessarily know if she was a recipient of a letter, because the postal facilities, the two of them that served her area, both tested negative for any anthrax at all.

WALKS: That's why it's important for us. I had a chance to talk with Secretary Tommy Thompson a couple of days ago. It's gratifying to hear that they are working on what I think is really the next public health frontier. How do you get a consistent public health message to a very diverse population? Here's a woman living alone, 94 years old. We have seen other folks who are postal workers working in back mail rooms. this particular case is very concerning because whatever speculation and guesswork was out there, this doesn't fit, much like the case in New York of the woman in the hospital, that died, didn't fit. From a public health perspective, early diagnosis, good medical detective work, making sure all of our first-line people know what to look for -- and don't stereotype, don't think it's only postal workers. Sure they're the high-risk group, but the rest of us need a clear, consistent message, across different populations, across different cultures, so we know what to look for and our local doc in his or her little office knows what to be suspicious about and how to get the big team in and get the CDC in.

We are learning faster than the people who are trying to kill us. That's an important point to make.

HARRIS: Exactly. Everyone we talked to has said the same thing about the fact that this is a great opportunity to learn something here about great ways to save some lives here.

Let me ask you about something else. We also have been hearing these reports about more information coming about the letter that was sent to Sen. Leahy's office, and the last report saying there were billions of spores of anthrax inside that letter. When you look at the fact that this woman may have contracted this disease almost in a vacuum, with nothing else suspicious around her, does this not make you more concerned about people there in Washington if this one letter contained billions of spores, and this woman is a woman who got it out of nowhere -- and here you've got a great source of this bacteria?

WALKS: We have consistently said, here in Washington, we are not going to speculate about how many letters, and I've said before we are not going to speculate about how many spores. This is a different kind of anthrax than all those tests that were done many years ago, when you needed 10,000 to 50,000 spores. Somebody is manufacturing this stuff in a way that makes it stay in the air longer, makes it come through all those envelopes we thought it couldn't come through. So for us, it's important to say wow, yes there are billions of anthrax bacteria spores in one place, but we don't know exactly how many it takes to infect someone. And a little bit of anthrax in the air is a lot of anthrax for one individual.

The other thing we know is that we have a 94-year-old woman here, and again, to go way back, preliminary studies have shown that younger people tend to tolerate breathed-in anthrax spores better. So we don't know whether she was in a place where there was some anthrax in the air. The younger people around her may not have gotten ill, but she may have been at somewhat higher risk.

All of those are things we need to look more into, and as we learn more about anthrax and how it infects us, I think we will learn more about keeping us healthy once we find that first case -- do the good detective work outside, but make sure the first-line medical responders are well resourced to do their work.

HARRIS: Thanks for painting the picture for us. That's a very clear picture of exactly what's to be done in tracking all of this down. Lots of information to dig up. Dr. Ivan Walks, happy holidays to you.

WALKS: You too. Thank you.

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