Fears of a bio-terrorist campaign heightened Saturday in the United States after a second person contracted anthrax, causing panic-buying of antibiotics and a wave of false alarms.
Officials pleaded for calm and the FBI said there was no evidence linking the case of anthrax contracted by an employee of NBC in New York, as well as an earlier fatal case in Florida, with the September 11 terrorist attacks.
A total of four persons have tested positive for the rare disease, but only two were infected.
But Vice President Dick Cheney, while cautioning the anthrax investigation was still at an early stage, warned that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was known to have experimented with biological weapons.
"I think the only responsible thing for us to do is to proceed on the basis it could be linked," Cheney said late Friday in an interview with PBS television.
The emergence of the new case Friday led to pharmacies and doctors in New York and elsewhere being inundated with demands for the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, which is used to treat anthrax.
Albert Gardini said his New York pharmacy had been overwhelmed by frightened people. "We have lost a lot of the Cipro we had in stock and now we can't replace it," he said.
Martin Blaser, chairman of the medical department of New York University, said he had been swamped by requests for prescriptions. "Every physician in the city is experiencing the same thing," he added.
Many major news organisations also stopped accepting new mail when it was revealed the NBC News employee tested positive for skin anthrax after opening a hate letter containing a mysterious white powder on September 25.
The woman, identified as 38-year-old Erin O'Connor, is reported to be making a full recovery after taking Cipro since October 1 as a precaution after she developed chest sores.
The skin anthrax she contracted is much less serious than the respiratory form of the disease which killed a photo editor at American Media Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida, last week.
A reporter at the New York Times, who specialises in the Middle East and bioterrorism, opened an envelope Friday with the same St. Petersburg, Florida, postmark that was on the envelope sent to NBC.
The Times said the letter also contained white powder and carried threats against President George W. Bush and the Sears Tower in Chicago. The Times newsroom was evacuated for several hours before health officials gave the all-clear.
A law enforcement official said FBI agents were examining possible links between the incidents at NBC, the Times and American Media Inc. (AMI), where two other employees showed traces of anthrax spores but did not contract the disease.
"We are looking at all those cases. We have not been able to link any one person or any case of terrorism to all three of them," the official told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.
Nearly 1,000 people who spent time in the offices of AMI have been tested and given antibiotics, but no further cases of exposure were found when the tests concluded Friday.
Staff at NBC who worked on the same program as O'Connor, the Nightly News hosted by anchor Tom Brokaw, are also being tested and put on antibiotics as a precaution.
Following the NBC incident suspicious packages, some containing white powder, were discovered at several other news organisations including the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, both of which turned out to be false alarms.
A wave of alerts and hoaxes have shut down buildings and prompted investigations across the country, while mail room employees have been warned to be on the highest alert for anything suspicious.
Some 300 employees of a financial firm were evacuated from their office in Pleasanton, California, after a mailroom worker reported a powder emanating from a piece of mail, the company said.
And health officials in the southwestern state of Nevada said late Friday that a second round of tests on a suspicious letter received from Malaysia by the Reno branch of software giant Microsoft had tested negative for anthrax -- NEW YORK (AFP)
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