NEW YORK, Oct 12: An employee of the US television network NBC in New York on Friday tested positive for skin anthrax after she received a powdery substance through the mail, officials said.

The woman, who works in the news division but has not been identified, came into contact with the powder on Sept 25 and later developed a rash on her skin as well as a fever, said New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened a criminal investigation into the case.

The FBI has “opened a separate criminal investigation” into the case, said Ashcroft, who added that the New York infection has not yet been linked to the recent Anthrax outbreak in Florida.

“The source of the anthrax is being investigated and has not yet been determined,” he said. “No conclusions have been reached at this time.”

Mayor Giuliani said the woman had responded well to treatment with the antibiotic drug Cipro since Oct 1 and was expected to make a full recovery.

“People should not overreact to this,” Giuliani said at a news conference. “One piece of good news is that if anybody else was going to be affected, it would have happened by now.”

He said the powder sent in an envelope was tested twice and found to be negative for anthrax, but that a biopsy taken from the woman was Friday shown to be positive for the milder form of the disease, known as skin anthrax.

“If it is the powder, the powder goes back to Sept 25 and you don’t have any additional number of people reporting symptoms,” he said. “The chances of this being contained are very good,” he said.

Skin anthrax is much less serious than respiratory anthrax — blamed for the death of a man in Florida last week which has a mortality rate of up to 90 percent — and is not contagious.

As a precaution part of NBC’s offices in the Rockefeller Center have been cordoned off and tested to make sure no anthrax spores remained in the area, said Giuliani.

He said that anybody who may have come into contact with the woman was being tested and given Cipro as a precaution.

Giuliani stressed the city’s health department was treating the issue with extra caution because of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

However the director of the FBI office in New York, Barry Mawn, played down fears the outbreak could be linked to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“We see connection whatsover with 9-11, the way we would handle this is to open this as a separate criminal matter and proceed from there,” he said.

Giuliani also confirmed that a letter containing a mysterious powder had been received by The New York Times on Friday, and that it was being tested by the FBI.

Nearly 1,000 people who had spent time in the American Media (AMI) building in Boca Raton, Florida, have been given protective antibiotics after the anthrax scare there, the Centers for Disease Control said in a statement.—AFP