October 21, 2001 BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) - A supermarket tabloid mailroom worker infected with inhaled anthrax is ``doing great'' and his stepdaughter said Saturday she's anxious for his release from the hospital.
Ernesto Blanco, 73, was responding to antibiotics at Cedars Medical Center in Miami and doctors say the anthrax toxins in his body were slowly being diminished, Maria Orth said. He has been hospitalized 19 days. The hospital has declined comment on Blanco's case, citing patient confidentiality.
``He's doing great,'' Orth said. ``He's kind of depressed to be there because it's been so long.''
Doctors haven't said when Blanco could be released, Orth said. Family members visit him daily in a private room, where he was moved Thursday.
Earlier this month, photo editor Robert Stevens of The Sun, an American Media Inc. tabloid, died of inhaled anthrax. Blanco is also infected with the usually lethal form of the disease; another co-worker has tested positive for exposure.
Postal officials said Friday that an anthrax-tainted letter that infected the employees may have been mailed to an old address before being rerouted to the company's headquarters.
Trace amounts of anthrax were found at a postal facility in Lake Worth that once processed mail for The National Enquirer and Weekly World News, which both now have offices in the American Media building.
Postal officials said a letter mailed to the tabloids' old address could have been processed at the Lake Worth facility, then rerouted to another facility in Boca Raton where anthrax spores were found earlier this week. The Boca Raton office was handling American Media's mail at the time the tainted letter was delivered.
``It's plausible that one letter could account for all three locations testing positive,'' U.S. Postal Service spokesman Joseph Breckenridge said Friday. He said no employees were considered to be at risk.
Both postal facilities reopened Friday after crews from the Environmental Protection Agency removed the bacteria from the buildings.
Breckenridge said health officials also planned to test a postal facility near West Palm Beach as a precaution because American Media mail might have been routed through there as well.
About 400 other workers or visitors to the building are awaiting blood test results. A first round of blood tests detected anthrax antibodies in five additional workers, however follow-up tests were necessary to determine if anyone was exposed.
The tabloids are operating from temporary newsrooms in nearby Delray Beach and Miami.
The FBI handed over control of the anthrax investigation at American Media's headquarters to health agencies Saturday and was set to leave the building.
Teams from the EPA and the Florida and Palm Beach County health departments will assume responsibility for decontaminating the American Media building, FBI special agent Hector Pesquera said in a statement Saturday.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
