WASHINGTON, Dec 16: US officials are considering offering the anthrax vaccine to more than 3,000 people recently exposed to the deadly bacteria, out of concern that hibernating spores could outlast antibiotics taken against the illness.

Many medical experts and federal authorities Saturday agreed at a symposium sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control that the vaccine should be made available to people exposed to high levels of anthrax because dormant spores could spring back to life.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson will decide whether to give the vaccine to those exposed to the bacteria and considered most at risk of developing the disease.

The at-risk group includes postal workers at mail-sorting centers in Trenton, New Jersey and Washington, DC, and some Senate office workers who reportedly had more anthrax spores in their nostrils than the number that would cause an entire building to be shut down.

Recent research indicates that an anthrax spore may hide in a lung protected “like a marble,” said Emory University epidemiologist Phil Brachman, at Saturday’s gathering.

“It’s a smart cookie. It makes a little capsule around itself like a cocoon. And it can survive for years,” he said.

If Thompson chooses to make the vaccine available — a decision is likely in the next few days — the shots could start as soon as next week, said D A Henderson, US director of public health preparedness.

Of the 2.1 million anthrax vaccinations given since 1954 — mostly to military personnel, researchers and wool workers — only 10 people have been hospitalized with illness from the vaccine, US officials said.

Side effects from the vaccine are considered mild — usually soreness of the arm, nausea and headaches — and generally last only a few days, officials said.

In 1998, the Pentagon decided to vaccinate all US military personnel against the deadly bacteria, but the campaign has been suspended for lack of sufficient stocks of the vaccine.

Meanwhile the Washington Post reported Sunday that anthrax spores mailed to US congressional offices in recent attacks are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria the US Army has kept since 1980.

Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in the attacks, only five labs so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, scientists familiar with genetic tests on the specimen said.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle theorised earlier this month that the anthrax-laced letter sent to him several weeks ago was probably mailed by someone who once worked in the military.

The spores in the letter addressed to Daschle, and anotherletter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, were highly concentrated and would have required special equipment to produce and handle, investigators said.

Last week, the US Army admitted it has produced small amounts of weapons-grade anthrax spores but said its stocks were all accounted for and could not have been used in recent bioterror attacks.

The Washington Post also reported Sunday that the FBI’s investigation into the anthrax attacks is increasingly focusing on whether US government bioweapons research programmes — including one run by the CIA — may have been the source of the anthrax powder.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s biowarfare programme, designed to find ways to defend against bioterrorists and involved the use of small amounts of Ames strain, an agency spokesman told the Post.

An agency spokesman told the paper that the anthrax contained in the letters under investigation “absolutely did not” come from CIA labs.—AFP