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CNN Saturday Morning News
More Anthrax Traces Found on Capitol Hill
Aired October 27, 2001 - 08:00 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: As we just mentioned, more anthrax traces have been found on Capitol Hill, this time in a House office building.
Our medical correspondent Rhonda Rowland is there and has more -- good morning, Rhonda.
RHONDA ROWLAND, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra.
That's right, this time it's the Longworth Office Building right behind me, which is just south of the Capitol. Last night investigators announced that they found traces of anthrax in three offices within that building and again, the Longworth Build gin is one of three offices for the House of Representatives.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LT. DAN NICHOLS, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE: These offices are on the sixth and seventh floors of the Longworth House Office Building. It's important to note that these are trace samples much like the ones we found in the elevator in the Hart Senate Office Building. These are merely trace samples.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROWLAND: The U.S. Capitol's physicians said they'll now begin the process of identifying the individuals who were in or near those offices so they can begin appropriate treatment with antibiotics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. JOHN EISOLD, CAPITOL ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: We are not concerned about a significant health risk. We are confident that by identification and treatment of a population who as yet not exhibited any symptoms that would be worrisome that we can maintain their good health.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROWLAND: The CDC's director, Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, said they now believe that more than one letter is responsible for the contaminations here in the nation's capital. For some time, officials had been saying that the one letter, the Daschle letter was responsible. But now that the contamination have spread to a total of 11 buildings -- that's offices and postal facilities -- they believe that it would be virtually impossible for one letter to be responsible. They have not found any additional letters, but again they believe that the spread is due to more than one letter -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: How else does this spread? I mean once a letter gets into an area, Rhonda, and obviously they're finding all these different areas where there is these traces, the samples, how does that keep multiplying the contamination?
ROWLAND: Well, I think that's what they're trying to figure out. With doing all of these samplings, all these environmental samplings in all these locations, they're trying to figure out where the anthrax has shown up. But the source is what they're still trying to determine, exactly how it got into these different locations, and that's all part of the investigation, trying to track it down. And a lot of mail has been collected from the capital and it's been sent off to another area
(AUDIO GAP)
PHILLIPS: A little trouble with our satellite feed there. We apologize for that. We'll try and continue our discussion with Rhonda Rowland a little bit later in the hour or the next hour.
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