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CNN Saturday Morning News

No Anthrax Traces Found in Oxford, Connecticut

Aired November 24, 2001 - 09:19   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: Now we want to bring you up to the minute on the anthrax investigation. Investigators have found no traces of spores in Oxford, Connecticut, where a 94-year-old widow died of inhalation anthrax. She's being laid to rest today, and our CNN's Brian Palmer is live in Oxford this morning.

Good morning again, Brian.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra.

The funeral for Ottilie Lundgren is going to be held at her church, the Emanuel Lutheran Church, which is a few yards behind us here in Oxford, Connecticut. The family has asked the media to keep cameras away, and the state police are actually enforcing that request.

Now, an army of investigators has descended on this small Connecticut community to try and find the source of this anthrax. Yesterday investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took samples, collected samples, including swab samples from her hair salon where she went every Saturday, as well as from Town Hall, again, looking for traces of this disease.

Preliminary results from earlier rounds of tests of her home, of her mail, of her trash, and of local post offices have yielded no traces of anthrax. But authorities saying that these tests are ongoing, these investigations are ongoing. They're both extensive in the range of places that they're looking at and intensive in terms of the degree of focus that they're putting into it.

Now, last night, local and state authorities, public health authorities, held a town hall meeting for area residents, essentially trying to explain to them how anthrax is transmitted and the history of the disease as well. It's similar to a town hall meeting conducted in Ewing Township, New Jersey, a couple of weeks ago trying to explain to residents there how anthrax is transmitted.

The difference was, there's a greater presence of federal authorities in New Jersey. You had the lead agent from the FBI actually giving people a very brief presentation. Last night, there was one gentleman from the Connecticut State Police who did not make a presentation. He did answer a question toward the end, but there was really no substantial law enforcement presence. Now, here in the media, we've used terms like "puzzling," "mysterious," and "baffling" to describe how the investigation is progressing, how this disease is progressing. And to a large extent, that's true. Investigators have also used that language. But we forget how little we know about this disease, and investigators essentially learning on the job -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Brian, we were just talking about -- we were concerned about you in that pouring rain. You take cover, all right? And thank you for that update. All right, Brian Palmer, live from Connecticut -- Catherine.

CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to get a little bit more perspective now on the anthrax investigation, and we're going to turn to bioterrorism analyst Javed Ali.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

JAVED ALI, CNN BIOTERRORISM ANALYST: Thank you, Catherine.

CALLAWAY: This is an incredibly puzzling case. It seems like we're going through it all over again as we did with Kathy Nguyen on where did this anthrax come from?

ALI: Exactly. It certainly is puzzling. From my perspective, and from the perspective of other people outside the investigation, it doesn't appear that the source of the infection with Miss Lundgren was from a natural source, meaning that she could have contracted this disease from anthrax spores that were somehow contained in the soil in Connecticut.

I don't think there's been a case of anthrax in Connecticut since the 1950s. That's not to say the spores aren't in the soil, but for her to contract the pulmonary form of the disease, if the spores were in the soil, somehow they would have to have been -- have to have been lifted up into the air, and the right number of spores to trigger the infection.

So that doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation at this point.

CALLAWAY: And it would seem almost impossible that she could have been infected through the mail if they're not finding any traces of it in her mailbox and her home, in the post office that the letters went through. Is -- could it still be possible?

ALI: Well, it still could be possible. There has to be some person, place, or thing, trying to make it as easy as -- for people to understand, that had the anthrax material on it for her to come into contact with it. There -- I mean, this material just doesn't happen sort of magically.

She came into contact with it, contact with it somewhere. The hard trick for the investigators is going to be trying to determine what that, you know, something is.

CALLAWAY: Yes. The other question that comes up, and I think I already know the answer to this, but we have to ask it, is that, you know, there's more testing going on now for anthrax. Doctors are certainly more suspicious all across this country now when they see someone with symptoms like this.

Could there have been in the past more naturally occurring anthrax deaths that we're just catching now?

ALI: Maybe, but I'm still not convinced that that dynamic has occurred, because cases of anthrax, certainly pulmonary anthrax, they're distinct after the first one or two days. And the death is so rapid, and the sort of dynamics of that death are so distinct that most astute physicians would have picked up on that early on, or, you know, within the course of the death, or even doing an autopsy, you would have seen the presence of the bacteria in that person.

So I don't think that's a, that's a plausible explanation.

CALLAWAY: And Javed, what about aerial dissemination? I mean, she would be the only one affected.

ALI: Right, and that, to me, does not seem like another explanation that's at play here. If there was a larger aerosol release of the material, somewhere in that township or another part of Connecticut where she may have traveled through, more people would have been exposed, or at least tested positive for the presence of the spores.

Land would have tested positive, buildings would have tested positive, and that evidence just hasn't emerged right now.

CALLAWAY: All right, so you're an expert. What are they thinking now? What are they going -- what's the next step now?

ALI: I honestly think they're still looking at some kind of cross-contamination, whether it was a piece of mail or something else, but trying to find what that source is is proving very difficult, because it looks like the amount of material that she was exposed to was very, very, very small. I mean, we're talking a thousandth of a gram, or something even smaller than that.

And that material just may not be easily found at this point.

CALLAWAY: But, you know, the Lundgren case and the Kathy Nguyen case are so similar.

ALI: They are similar, but there just is no good, clear explanation at this point, other than some potential cross- contamination.

CALLAWAY: All right, lots of questions yet to be answered. CNN bioterrorism analyst Javed Ali, thank you for joining us this morning.

ALI: Thank you.

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