BY THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Published November 9, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) Some 32,000 people have been prescribed antibiotics in the anthrax crisis, 5,000 who really needed them and thus must take the pills a full 60 days, health officials said yesterday.
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Medical authorities said in new guidelines that merely finding traces of anthrax clinging to surfaces does not warrant closing buildings or prescribing antibiotics.
President Bush went to Atlanta yesterday to tour the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where scientists are working around the clock to deal with the anthrax that has killed four people and sickened 13 others.
Postmaster General John Potter asked Congress for $5 billion to offset the toll of the attacks by mail. He said the government should pay for safety equipment and other recovery.
"They should be considered costs of homeland security," Potter told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.
In the most stunning picture yet of how far anthrax has reached, the CDC disclosed that 32,000 Americans have taken antibiotics for at least several days while scientists raced to tell who was truly exposed to the germs. Of them, 5,000 were found at risk for anthrax infection and told to take antibiotics for a full 60 days.
Cipro, the main drug prescribed, can cause some severe side effects. But a quick study of 490 Floridians taking it and other antibiotics found 20 percent reported only minor side effects. The Food and Drug Administration plans the unprecedented step of contacting all 32,000 antibiotic recipients to better count side effects and ensure that no one has a relapse after ending their medication.
In addition, 300 post offices and other buildings have been tested for anthrax, the CDC said. Most heavily contaminated are the Hart Senate Office Building, where an anthrax-tainted letter to Majority Leader Thomas Daschle was opened, and Washington"s Brentwood central post office, which processed that letter. Officials say the majority of other buildings have had no or very little contamination.
"We will never remove every spore" in a building cleanup, Dr. James Baker Jr., a University of Michigan bioterror expert, told Congress. As for Hart, "you will not sterilize that building no matter what you do."
