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Anthrax threat puts surgery on hold at New York hospital

Worker suspected of having inhalation form of disease

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Surgery was canceled Tuesday at a Manhattan outpatient hospital while the staff awaits word on the results of environmental tests conducted after a hospital stockroom employee may have contracted inhalation anthrax.

The hospital worker is in serious condition with a suspected case of inhalation anthrax, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday.

Preliminary tests indicate the Bronx woman, 61, who works at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital on the Upper East Side, has the most serious form of the illness, Giuliani said.

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New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says that a hospital worker initially has tested positive for inhalation anthrax (October 30)

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The woman, whom he did not identify, works in a stockroom near the hospital's mailroom and delivers materials to other areas of the hospital, he said.

"She didn't handle mail, but she was in a room where mail came in and out," Giuliani said.

The mayor said the supply room was housed jointly with the mailroom until last week. "She was proximate to a mailroom, so you have to give that consideration," Giuliani said. However, he said that environmental samples taken have not shown any evidence of anthrax contamination.

Forty environmental samples have been taken at the hospital, and the first 10 of those so far have tested negative for anthrax. In addition, 27 samples were taken at the woman's home, but the results are pending, Giuliani said.

The woman began to develop chills and muscle aches Thursday, he added, but she continued to work Thursday and Friday.

By late Sunday, she went to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was put on a respirator in "very serious condition," Giuliani said.

Definitive test results will not be known until sometime Tuesday, he said.

Hospital personnel arriving at the hospital Tuesday will be directed to another facility, where they will be interviewed and authorities will decide whether to test them or give them antibiotics.



 
 
 
 



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