OXFORD, Conn. — While federal investigators searched for clues to how an elderly woman came in contact with the anthrax that killed her, Chilean and U.S. officials confirmed the first reported case of a deadly strain of the bacteria in mail outside the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed on Thursday that a letter sent from Switzerland to Chile was tainted with anthrax. The letter had been sent to Dr. Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago.
Banfi, who opened the envelope, and 12 others nearby have not tested positive for exposure to anthrax spores but were being treated for the disease as a precaution, according to the Chilean Health Ministry.
Banfi became suspicious because the letter was postmarked in Zurich but marked with a Florida return address, Chilean officials said. No other details were made available.
In Connecticut, authorities investigating a 94-year-old woman's death Wednesday from inhalation anthrax are trying to piece together a picture of the last weeks of her life.
Law enforcement and health officials are speaking to Ottilie Lundgren's friends to determine what she did, where she went and who she saw before Nov. 16, when she was admitted to a hospital with flu-like symptoms.
Investigators are sifting through Lundgren's trash and examining her mail as they try to solve the mystery of how a woman who rarely ventured far from home contracted the bacteria.
"We're not focused on any one thing, although the mail is certainly an obvious issue," said FBI spokeswoman Lisa Bull. "But we're really trying to keep an open mind about any possibility."
Agents wearing biohazard suits were planning to search "every square inch" of Lundgren's property, state police spokesman J. Paul Vance said.
Nicole Coffin, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said testing so far has shown that the strain of anthrax that killed Lundgren was similar to anthrax found in other recent cases.
A post office in Seymour and a larger mail distribution center in Wallingford — two Connecticut sites where mail to Oxford is processed — were tested for anthrax Wednesday. Results were expected within two days.
There have been several reports worldwide of anthrax being found in mail, but most have turned out to be false alarms. They included cases in Kenya, the Bahamas and at Pakistan's largest newspaper in which authorities at first said they had found dangerous forms of anthrax in mail but later said further testing found no anthrax.