The British High Commission in Pakistan received a suspicious letter that officials initially feared contained anthrax, a senior doctor told AFP Friday.
Pakistan Institute of Medical Science chief casualty medical officer Sher Afzal told the agency that an employee at the commission, Mohammad Javed, opened the letter on Thursday and was taken to hospital for tests.
But Afzal said Javed tested negative for the potentially deadly bacteria, which has been mailed to US buildings and offices in what US officials suspect is a campaign linked to the September 11 suicide plane terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"The employee opened the letter and a powder flew into the air and he inhaled it but he has tested negative for anthrax and will be discharged today," Afzal said.
A spokeswoman for the British High Commission confirmed a package was sent to their Islamabad office.
"It contained a powder so it was a suspect package and we are carrying out investigations," the spokeswoman said.
More than 40 people have been exposed to the anthrax bacteria via deadly spores mailed in letters across the US, and one person has died.
But although there have been dozens of scares across the world, only one letter sent to a family in Kenya has tested positive for anthrax outside the United States, said AFP.
The Argentine health ministry also said Thursday a letter from the United States almost certainly contained anthrax microbes.
The number of known anthrax cases in the United States grew to seven Thursday as authorities announced that a CBS News worker in New York and two postal workers in Trenton, N.J., were infected, according to ABCNEWS.com.
At CBS, an employee tested positive for coetaneous anthrax," Tom Ridge, director of the new White House Office of Homeland Security, said, referring to the easily treatable "skin" form of the disease. "[She] has been placed on antibiotics and is expected … to make a full recovery."
The employee, an assistant to CBS News anchor Dan Rather, is the third person believed to have contracted coetaneous anthrax at a television network in New York. The other two — a 7-month-old infant who visited ABCNEWS headquarters and an assistant to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw — are also responding well to antibiotic treatment.
Unlike the NBC case, where the infected staffer is known to have opened and handled an anthrax-laced letter, the sources of infection in the ABC and CBS incidents are unknown, said the ABC.
"We don't have any memory of any suspicious letter of any kind," CBS News President Andrew Heyward told reporters Thursday.
Anthrax shut down the US House of Representatives on Wednesday, after 31 Senate staff members tested positive for exposure to the substance. A string of hoaxes worldwide reached Sweden, meanwhile, where tests on Thursday showed that a powder sent to government offices contained no anthrax, said reports.
Elsewhere in the world, Australia has been gripped by panic earlier this week as anthrax scares hit five cities, presenting dozens of people with a harrowing wait for test results to clear them of possible infection, according to The Nation newspaper.
However, these cases have largely been revealed as hoaxes. Australian Prime Minster John Howard said Tuesday that the emergencies declared at two consulates, a newspaper office, the Australian Taxation Office, an airport and a university resulted from deliberate false alarms.
Meanwhile, a suspect package delivered to the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday had no traces of anthrax, the department of health said, after 13 people were taken to a hospital as a precautionary measure.
AP said that British police had received several anthrax-related hoaxes and had warned Britons to be on their guard and watch their mail carefully.
A Scotland Yard spokesman the package had been removed and tested and found to be harmless. He refused to say whether there were substances inside the packages but said the tests were negative, adding: “There was nothing harmful.''
The Royal London Hospital Whitechapel said the 13 people from the exchange were decontaminated before they arrived and they were given antibiotic ciprofloxacin, as a precautionary measure, according to the agency.
According to Reuters, concern over anthrax spread on Monday to Canada's Parliament and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office in Berlin as well as to France, Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand and Israel, where letters and suspicious powder were discovered – Albawaba.com
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