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CNN Saturday Morning News

Kathy Nguyen Dies of Anthrax Infection

Aired November 03, 2001 - 08:13   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: In Washington, a Treasury Department off-site mail facility is closed this morning. Last night an employee there found a suspicious letter with a Trenton, New Jersey postmark. Three anthrax tainted letters had Trenton postmarks and this comes as investigators try to learn how a Bronx woman contracted inhaled anthrax. Kathy Nguyen died this week.

And as CNN's Gary Tuchman reports, authorities have come up empty in their search for answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They've tested where she lived. They've tested where she died. They've tested where she worked. The results?

DR. NEAL COHEN, NEW YORK CITY HEALTH DIRECTOR: All the testing in that case thus far has been negative.

TUCHMAN: Authorities admit they're baffled about the inhalation anthrax death of Kathy Nguyen.

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: So we're trying to reconstruct her life to determine whether there are any leads that would help us determine how she contracted the anthrax.

TUCHMAN: A major part of her life was her daily commute. She would walk out of the courtyard of her Bronx apartment complex and three minutes later would climb the 27 steps to the elevated tracks of the MTA's number six train. That's the New York City subway line that runs through some of New York's poorest neighborhoods and its wealthiest.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: The next stop is East 149th Street.

TUCHMAN: Kathy Nguyen's commute took about 25 minutes if there weren't any delays.

(on camera): After she arrived at her stop, she had a four block walk to work. She did the same thing every work day.

(voice-over): This token clerk at her home station, Whitlock Avenue, knew her. CARMELO RODRIGUEZ, TOKEN CLERK: And she was always by herself. I'd come by, she would say hello, very friendly. She would always buy a monthly pass, you know, so she could come and go without having to stop here all the time. But I used to see her. She would say, "Hi. How are you doing?"

TUCHMAN: There's no evidence the bacteria came from the subway, but the amount of time Kathy Nguyen spent on the train raises the question will testing be done there, too?

MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI (R), NEW YORK CITY: We're going to talk to the MTA about that. But as far as I know, that has not been done. But are going to talk to the MTA about it.

TUCHMAN: The 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant's neighbors say she did not travel and did not do much else other than work and come home. They also say they're wary that while coworkers of Kathy Nguyen have been advised to go on antibiotics, they have not. This neighbor says she and her four children are going to anyway.

UNIDENTIFIED NEIGHBOR: I'd rather be safe than sorry, like I told you. I haven't been in my mailbox since this happened.

TUCHMAN: And that's despite the fact that all the-mailboxes, including Kathy Nguyen's, have also tested negative.

Gary Tuchman, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: And joining us now to talk about anthrax infections is Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University in Atlanta. Good morning to you, doctor.

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT, EMORY UNIVERSITY: Good morning, Martin. How are you?

SAVIDGE: You just heard Gary Tuchman outline this recent troubling case regarding the woman in New York City. How concerned should we be? She didn't appear to have the normal connections we've come to associate.

DEL RIO: We need to be intellectually concerned. It's very puzzling. But she had to have been exposed to the organisms. Where was she exposed is difficult to determine at this point, precisely because she is the only case. When you have an outbreak of a disease, you have, there were five, six, seven people sick, it'll be a lot easier for investigators to figure out where she could have been exposed. But the fact that she appears to be the only one at this point makes it hard for investigators.

But I am sure that the tools of epidemiology that will be used and are being used to investigate the association with this case will eventually find out exactly how she got exposed.

SAVIDGE: Now, as an expert in infectious diseases, what would you be looking for next, perhaps regarding this woman or people who knew her or worked with her?

DEL RIO: Well, I think that in people that were in her surroundings, her immediate contacts. And we talked about, for example, people that were in the subway. I think people need to be aware in New York City if new cases of respiratory anthrax are to appear. And the Centers for Disease Control publishes weekly the morbidity and morality weekly report. And in their latest issue, which was published just a few days ago, they go very clearly over what physicians need to be recognizing, what physicians need to be aware about in order to suspect cases of anthrax.

And I think the clear evidence that we found here is that if you suspect this disease, if you diagnose it early, if you even once the person has developed symptoms if you start them on antibiotics right away, the patients do survive.

There has been up to now 10 cases of respiratory anthrax confirmed in this country. Four have died but six are still alive and doing well.

SAVIDGE: Nationally, how do you think we are doing as far as coping with this problem and the matters that have been put into effect to try to guard against contamination?

DEL RIO: I think nationally the response has been very good. I think unfortunately the terrorists have succeeded in their intention, which is precisely to create terror. The federal authorities have responded to over 7,000 calls for possible contaminations. Over 1,000 sites have been looked at and have been, cultures have been investigated. And the terror, the anxiety that is happening nationally is way out of proportion to actually the number of cases.

Twenty-one cases of confirmed anthrax, some contaminations of some sites, but really the number of cases have not, has not been as large as really the panic that has been created. And I think we need to be aware of that. People need to put this into perspective and realize that there have only been four states in which cases of anthrax have been confirmed. There have only been 21 cases. This appears to be fairly limited. And really this has not been a true bioterrorist attack in the sense of thousands of deaths, which is what we suspected.

This has been a, has created an event of anxiety, of incredible fear and terror among people, and in that way I would say the terrorists have succeeded. They have really put people very anxious about the events and people are way out of proportion concern.

I mean people in California are opening their mails with gloves and things like that. I think that's really not necessary at this point. I think people need to be aware that this is very limited. And that from the other perspective I think federal authorities are using this, they're actively investigating, they're stopping, they're doing whatever they need to do. But also they're, I would say this has been very helpful in the sense of being a test case. This is allowing them to see what the response should be if instead of 21 cases of confirmed anthrax, 10 respiratory, 11 cutaneous, there would be 10,000 cases.

I think we need to be aware that this is not a massive epidemic. There are very few cases, very concrete, very clearly localized. And therefore I think that as a nation we need to be more level-headed and we need to decrease the level of some anxiety that people have over this, these unfortunate events and very sad and unfortunate events.

SAVIDGE: Well, the anomaly here, though, seems to be the mail. And the mail is always generally looked upon as a fairly innocent, fairly innocuous sort of item. Now the terror literally can show up at your driveway or into your home coming through the mail slot.

DEL RIO: And that is correct. I think that is actually one of the most interesting aspects of this whole event. Anthrax, no infectious disease up to now had ever been transmitted through the mail. In fact, there was, there are very clear scientific evidence that you couldn't transmit any infectious disease through the mail. This is the first time ever in the history of infectious disease that the mail has been able to transmit an infectious agent.

So that in itself is an anomaly. And you're absolutely right, millions of pieces of mail crisscross this country on a daily basis. The United States Postal Service is a highly efficient service in which mails get taken from one side to the other of the country in 48, 72 hours. And you're absolutely right, we all receive large packages of mail in our homes. And therefore anthrax hits home. It hits home on a daily basis when the, you know, the fear of anthrax hits home.

SAVIDGE: Sure.

DEL RIO: And therefore people -- you're absolutely right. I mean this is hitting in a very sensitive area. In a very daily way it's reminding us of how vulnerable we are as a society.

SAVIDGE: We almost are out of time, but how much of this that is taking place now is rewriting, perhaps, our understanding, rewriting your industry as far as infectious disease?

DEL RIO: I don't think it's rewriting it. I think what it's showing us is that infectious diseases are bound to come back. Infectious diseases are always showing us new things. I would say AIDS, anthrax, etc. We have hundreds of examples in the, in medicine of how infectious diseases keep on being threats and therefore it is important that the public health infrastructure be as sound and as strong as possible.

I think a lesson out of this is that we need to rebuild and we need to strengthen our public health infrastructure in order to deal with infectious diseases on a daily basis.

SAVIDGE: Dr. Del Rio from Emory University, an infectious disease expert. Thank you for joining us this morning.

DEL RIO: Thank you very much.

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