Search for anthrax intensifies

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Postal Service buried a mail handler killed by anthrax – the second funeral in two days – while the search for the bacteria widened Saturday to thousands of businesses in Washington, D.C., and 30 mail distribution centers. Authorities worried that there might be a second anthrax-laced letter, or more, not yet discovered.

With the nation on edge over anthrax-by-mail, the post office signed a $40 million contract to buy eight electron-beam devices to sanitize letters and packages. The equipment will be used first in Washington, where the anthrax scare has spread from mail centers for Congress and the White House to the Supreme Court and the CIA.

The Supreme Court justices are taking antibiotics as a precaution along with other employees in the building, Dr. Ivan Walks, Washington’s public health director, said Saturday. No new cases of anthrax had been reported in people or buildings over the weekend, he added.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota, whose office received an anthrax-related letter, said Saturday he was angry about the attacks, but he said Americans must move forward.

“We cannot be paralyzed by our anger or slowed by our sadness. We need to identify the weaknesses in our system of confronting bioterrorism so that we can protect our people,” Daschle said in the Democratic response to the president’s weekly radio address.

In New Jersey, state health officials said that about 600 people who visited nonpublic areas of a Hamilton Township mail processing facility where anthrax was found should take antibiotics. The recommendation applies mainly to workers from some 300 corporations who pick up or drop off mail. Five New Jersey postal workers have contracted the disease.

In Washington, police and health experts continued testing for anthrax contamination in congressional offices and postal facilities. The Ford and Longworth buildings at the House of Representatives and the Senate’s Hart office building remained closed, as well as the mailroom in the Dirksen building. The Hart-Dirksen garage was scheduled to reopen on Monday.

About 68 tons of letters and other material from Washington were being trucked to a plant in Lima, Ohio, to be decontaminated with electron beams normally used to sterilize hospital equipment.

The Washington, D.C., health department said it was prescribing doxycycline to new cases where people need preventive antibiotics and was switching old cases to that drug from Cipro, which had originally been recommended.

Officials said that doxycycline has fewer side effects than Cipro. CDC studies of the type of anthrax involves have shown that it can be treated with that drug. The Supreme Court justices were being given doxycycline.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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