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| Florida man died of anthrax |
| 2001-10-08 |
Anthrax bacteria have been detected in the nasal passage of a co-worker of the man who died last week from the disease, health officials said Monday. The building where both worked was closed after the bacteria also were detected there. The latest case, a man whose name was not immediately made public, was in good condition Monday at an unidentified hospital, according to the Florida health department. He has not been diagnosed with the disease. A nasal swab from the patient tested positive for the anthrax bacterium, said Tim O'Conner, regional spokesman for Florida's health department. It was not yet clear if anthrax had only infiltrated his nose or had gotten into his lungs, officials said. Relatively large anthrax spores that lodge in the upper respiratory tract are less dangerous than smaller spores that get into the lungs. Doctors "describe his condition as good right now," O'Conner said. "He hasn't been diagnosed with the disease, there's just a presence of (the disease) in his nostrils." "He was given a nasal swab because he happened to be in a hospital and he was ill," said Barbara Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. O'Conner and Reynolds said they did not know what symptoms of illness the man displayed or whether any of the symptoms were consistent with anthrax. The disease in early stages may resemble the flu. A co-worker of the man, Bob Stevens, died Friday, the first person in 25 years in the United States to have died from the rare inhaled form of anthrax. Stevens, 63, was a photo editor at the supermarket tabloid The Sun. Environmental tests performed at the Sun's offices in Boca Raton detected the anthrax bacteria, O'Conner said. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |