States alerted to virus threat

Monday, Sept. 17, 2001 | 9:59 a.m.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has asked state and local health agencies to be on alert for symptoms from exposure to chemical and biological agents.

The chance of biological or chemical weapons ever being used is remote, but the possibility does exist, according to the U.S. State Department. Although most nations have signed treaties promising to neither manufacture nor use such weapons, terrorist groups have no such limitations.

A letter of warning from the CDC was faxed to doctors last week, Clark County Health District spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said. The alert also has been posted at every nursing station at University Medical Center and in all of the public hospital's Quick Care locations.

Officials have no evidence that biological or chemical warfare were part of Tuesday's attacks, according to the CDC, but the attacks brought other terrorist threats to the forefront.

"Since the attacks everyone is on a heightened state of alert," Dr. Byron Brown, medical director for UMC said. "Our emergency room has a lot of traffic going through it, and we need to be especially vigilant."

Biological warfare agents include bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms that can cause illness or death. Chemical weapons include nerve agents, such as sarin gas and hydrogen cyanide. Members of a Japanese religious sect released sarin gas in a Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 people and injuring 5,500 others.

Rose Lee Bell, chief epidemiologist for Clark County, said a curriculum is being developed that will better enable the area's medical community to recognize early signs of exposure to biological weapons. Diseases such as anthrax and smallpox have incubation periods, and symptoms may not appear for several days, Bell said.

Anthrax can be spread through inhalation and causes lung ailments. It can also be spread through direct skin contact, in which case victims develop painful, ulcerated sores.

In February 1998 the FBI arrested two men in Clark County on suspicion that they were carrying anthrax as a deadly weapon, but tests later showed the vials the men carried contained a harmless anthrax vaccine for animals.

The next year Gov. Kenny Guinn signed a law that made it a felony to possess, stockpile or threaten to use anthrax or other biological agents in the manufacture of weapons.

Smallpox is a highly contagious disease that rarely surfaces, according to the CDC. Because the disease is so rare, only military personnel and laboratory workers require smallpox vaccinations, according to the CDC.

The chances of terrorists developing the means to spread either smallpox or anthrax are believed to be remote, Bell said.

Still, Bell said, the chances of terrorists crashing commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was at one time considered highly unlikely.

"The training we were already planning has taken on a new sense of urgency," Bell said. "We're facing a new world."

Physicians are also being asked to look for unusual clusters of illness and to immediately report their suspicions to the Health Alert Network, a consortium of state and federal agencies.

For example, Bell said, it would be highly unusual for dozens of people in June to show up at Las Vegas emergency rooms with symptoms consistent with those of flu or pneumonia, diseases more likely to emerge during winter.

"We'll need to ask ourselves, Is this a natural event or a bio-terrorism event?" Bell said.

Sunny Lucia, Clark County's bio-terrorism preparedness trainer, said she feared the terrorists involved in last week's attacks used the airplanes as a means to deliver biological or chemical weapons.

"It's a thought that hasn't left my mind yet," Lucia said. "We shouldn't be panicking, but we should see this as a harsh awakening."