UPDATE - US State Dept mailman falls sick with anthrax
Date: 26-Oct-01
Country: USA
He said environmental checks were being carried out at that facility and five others serving the State Department, all of which receive mail from Brentwood in Washington, where two postal workers have died and several others have become seriously ill from anthrax.
"An employee who works at our main mail-handling facility has tested positive for anthrax. The facility is called State Annex 32 in Sterling, Virginia," Boucher told reporters.
"Where and how he was exposed is not known. He is currently hospitalized and is being treated," he added.
Boucher also could not confirm whether the man had the inhaled or the cutaneous form of anthrax.
"All of our mail-handling employees have been placed on antibiotics as of yesterday. This main mail handling facility is completely closed," he said.
Boucher added that the other five State Department mail-handling facilities had also stopped receiving mail. He could not say if any of them were inside the Harry S. Truman building in central Washington, the hub of U.S. foreign policy.
But a State Department spokesman said Wednesday that mail room workers had been put on antibiotics and were being tested as a precaution both at the remote facility in Sterling and at the State Department itself.
"What we're doing is checking all the points where we handle this mail," Boucher said.
The man was confirmed as having the disease on the basis of a blood culture. "We don't know how he got it," Boucher said.
He added that mail going out to U.S. embassies had been stopped but as far as he knew, the classified diplomatic pouch had not.
Discoveries of a white powdery substance on two separate occasions since attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 in two rooms where mail is handled at the State Department turned out to be harmless.