N.Y. hospital worker has inhalation anthrax

Thousands of others may get antibiotics

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A 61-year-old Bronx woman is in critical condition with inhalation anthrax, city officials confirmed Tuesday, and antibiotics are being offered to everyone who has been in her place of work, the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, since October 11.

The woman is at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan where she is on a respirator.

City Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said at a press conference Tuesday the prophylactic treatment of anthrax antibiotics would be offered to staff members and patients and visitors in the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital over the past 19 days.

Kenneth Raske of the Greater New York Hospital Association estimated "a few thousand" people might need to undergo the regimen.

Distribution of antibiotics was set to begin at the Lenox Hill Hospital auditorium Tuesday afternoon and will continue Wednesday.

"We will stay until everyone has been seen and treated," said Gladys George, president and CEO of Lenox Hill Hospital.

The ill woman worked in a supply room of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, an outpatient facility. Officials said mail was processed in the room, although she did not handle it.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani said at the press conference the supply room was housed jointly with the mailroom until just last week.

"She was proximate to a mailroom, so you have to give that consideration," Giuliani said. Environmental samples have not yet shown any evidence of anthrax contamination, he said.

This case and a New Jersey case have federal investigators "intensively" considering the possibility of anthrax infection from mail delivered to private homes, a top health official said Tuesday.

In New Jersey a woman with no apparent connection to any known anthrax contamination contracted the disease.

"Up to yesterday there was no evidence at all that there could be, or is, an individual in which there might be the reasonable question, 'Did they get infected from a piece of mail that went to their home?'" said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "That is being intensively investigated right now."

The New York hospital case was first reported to the mayor's office late Sunday night after the woman checked herself into the hospital.

Giuliani said the woman complained of chills and a headache at work Thursday. She came to work Friday, but co-workers said she seemed very ill.

By Sunday night the illness had progressed, and she checked herself into the hospital around 11 p.m.

Cohen said additional blood work and tests confirmed the diagnosis of inhalation anthrax.

Surgery was canceled Tuesday at the outpatient hospital as the staff awaited word on environmental tests.

Ten of the 40 samples have so far tested negative for anthrax. Twenty-seven samples also were taken at the woman's home in the Bronx; those results were pending.