America Strikes: Anthrax

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 24, 2001

U.S. demands Bayer cut Cipro price

WASHINGTON -- Hours after the nation's health secretary threatened to seek a generic version of the anthrax treatment Cipro unless Bayer Corp. lowered the drug's price, the manufacturer announced it reached an agreement to settle the impasse.

"The price is the question, not the supply," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson told a congressional hearing Tuesday.

Bayer holds the patent on Cipro, the antibiotic being prescribed as a protection against the anthrax infection.

Federal health officials are looking to increase a government stockpile of the antibiotic in case wider treatment is needed. Thompson said Bayer says it can make 200-million pills within 60 days, enough to treat 12-million people.

But the price the government would have to pay to stockpile those pills is in dispute. "I can assure you we are not going to pay the price they are asking," Thompson told Congress.

Bayer initially asked between $1.75 and $1.85 a pill, Thompson said. His final offer, Thompson told CNN's Larry King Live late Tuesday, was less than $1 a pill.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the government had agreed in principle with Bayer to buy the medicine for less than $1 a tablet.

Dusting called harmless

JACKSON, Miss. -- A mysterious material dropped by a crop-dusting plane over a tiny Coast Guard post on the Mississippi River was fertilizer -- not anthrax, authorities said Tuesday.

One person was hospitalized as a precaution after the Monday flyover. Chris Sparkman, deputy commissioner of the state agriculture department, said the flyover appeared to be "accidental."

Spokeswoman Amy Bissell of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said the substance included fertilizer, and that tests were continuing to see what else it might have contained.

On Friday, a crop duster about 170 miles upriver sprayed a mist over a towboat and its 17 barges of coal. Investigators have ruled out anthrax in final tests in the towboat case, Sparkman said.

The tugboat and crew of 11 had been quarantined for 60 hours as a precaution.

Contaminated clothes stowed in Senate

WASHINGTON -- When the FBI needed a place to store anthrax-contaminated clothes last week, they put the garments in sealed bags in a conference room just steps away from the U.S. Senate chamber.

When health authorities decided to test Capitol Hill employees for exposure to anthrax, they did it in the same building where, the day before, congressional staffers had opened the anthrax-tainted letter that exposed 28 of them to the deadly germ.

Officials insist that neither decision posed any health risks.

Lt. Dan Nichols, the Capitol police spokesman, initially refused to comment on why the FBI had moved contaminated clothes from the Hart Senate Office Building into the Senate itself. Confronting reports from congressional aides that preliminary tests had shown traces of anthrax in the Senate's Lyndon Baines Johnson Room, where the FBI had stored the clothing, Nichols said he would not discuss results of preliminary tests.

Then on Tuesday, after reviewing final tests, Nichols issued a written statement: "The LBJ Room has been exhaustively tested and there is no evidence of anthrax contamination."

Democratic senators were reassured enough to file into the room at 12:30 p.m. for their weekly policy luncheon.

Around the world

ROME: Western embassies continued suffering anthrax jitters Tuesday, as the U.S. mission here called the fire department to take away a suspicious envelope. Results of tests by biohazard experts are expected today.

TORONTO: The Canadian government announced an agreement with Bayer, the patent holder for the anti-anthrax drug Cipro, to supply up to 1-million Cipro tables within 48 hours if needed by Canada. The deal sidesteps a threatened patent lawsuit.

CAIRO: A building on the U.S. Embassy compound was evacuated after cleaning staff found a powdery substance in two toilets. Experts from the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit in Egypt analyzed the powder and found no anthrax.

SRI LANKA: The British High Commission became the fifth foreign mission in four days to receive suspicious mail.

"The letter which contained a white powder was opened by a local staffer but there was minimum exposure," said Mahendra Rathnaweera, an official at the high commission. The employee is being treated with antibiotics.

BANGLADESH: The Australian High Commission was evacuated and closed when a staff member found a "white powdery substance" in an envelope, which came in the local mail. Test results are pending.

The 250 staff members of the British High Commission in Dhaka were evacuated Monday when a receptionist opened a hand-delivered letter and found white powder in it, an embassy official said Tuesday.

BEIRUT: Four letters that contained white powder were confiscated and sent to government laboratories for anthrax testing.

MOSCOW: A television station received an envelope leaking white powder after it aired a program on biological warfare, a station spokeswoman said. Tests for anthrax were incomplete.

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