Anthrax strains similar says US

The anthrax strains surfacing with terrifying impact in Florida, New York and Washington are all similar, Bush administration said indicating a single source.

‘‘We obviously are preparing for more,’’ said homeland security chief Tom Ridge.

Two weeks into the nation’s bioterrorism scare, Ridge also said the FBI had traced two anthrax-tainted letters to a single mailbox in New Jersey.

Authorities disclosed two more cases of the skin form of the disease pushing the total to eight victims.

Capitol Hill in Washington was largely deserted yesterday, save for hazardous-materials teams checking the sprawling office buildings for evidence that spores had spread.

Officials said they had not found any of the bacteria beyond previously known locations, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s office and a central Senate mailroom.

Three of 31 people were removed from the list of employees who earlier tested positive for exposure to the bacteria.

At a White House news conference, Ridge announced that after extensive lab tests, officials had concluded that all three strains of the bacteria ‘‘are indistinguishable. They are similar.’’

‘‘It does appear it may have been from the same batch,’’ he added, ‘‘But it may have been distributed to different individuals to infect and descend into different communities.’’

Ridge’s statement that letters to Daschle and NBC television newsman Tom Brokaw had been traced to a single mailbox appeared to catch other officials off guard.

Ridge also told reporters the anthrax had not been ‘‘weaponised’’, meaning it had not been refined to make it more easily inhaled by potential victims.

One participant in a conference call for members of Congress said that Robert Gibbs, a Defence Department official, referred to the anthrax as of ‘‘relative high quality’’.

The tally in the spate of anthrax infections included one death and one other case of the inhalation form of the disease, both in Florida, and six less severe skin infections. All involved people with connections to the news media or who handle mail.

Anthrax-spiked letters have turned up at Daschle’s office and in Brokaw’s office. Officials have not been able to determine the source of infections traced to ABC and CBS or the New York Post newspaper, which disclosed during the day that it, too, had been touched by the scare.

Newspaper officials in New York said that an editorial page assistant who had become ill, Johanna Huden, 30, had already recovered. City health officials circulated a memo to the paper’s staff, saying it was unlikely anyone else was at risk of developing an infection.

‘‘It is likely that the employee may have been infected while opening mail,’’ the memo said.

The letter carrier, a 35-year-old man whose name was not released, sorts and loads mail at a regional centre in Hamilton, New Jersey, that handled the letters sent to Brokaw and Daschle.

He was reported to be in a stable condition at a local hospital, receiving antibiotics. His condition ‘‘isn’t life threatening’’, said Richard McGarvey, a spokesman for the state health department.

In Washington, Capitol police issued an alert declaring two Senate office buildings a ‘‘warm zone’’, meaning no one was permitted without ‘‘personal protection equipment’’.

A spokesman, Dan Nichols, said that was a routine designation in cases in which hazardous materials testing was planned.

In the Capitol, officials said 3,900 nasal swabs had been conducted earlier in the week. With 1,400 results in hand, 28 were positive for exposure.

The 28 were 20 aides to Daschle, six members of the Capitol police force, and two staff members who work for Senator Russell Feingold, who occupies the office suite next to Daschle.

Feingold’s aides have said they were not in Daschle’s suite on Monday, when the letter was opened.

Officials conceded for the first time that that meant the anthrax had escaped the confines of the majority leader’s offices.

Yesterday the New York Times said a preliminary test by Brazilian authorities found ‘‘bacteria or spores consistent with anthrax’’ in a letter to the newspaper’s bureau in Rio de Janeiro.

The letter was posted on October 5 from New York and received on October 16. It had no return address.

Four employees are taking antibiotics as a precaution, the Times said. Brazil’s Health Ministry said it was awaiting test results on the unopened letter.