NEW YORK, Nov 21: A 94-year-old woman stricken with inhalation anthrax died in hospital Wednesday, hospital president Patrick Charmel announced, bringing the total of anthrax deaths to five.

Officials announced late Tuesday that Ottilie Lundgren, of rural Oxford, Connecticut, had been infected with the often-fatal bacteria, although it was still a mystery where the woman, who largely stayed at home, contracted the disease.

Her death in Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut, marks the fifth from inhalation anthrax in recent weeks in the United States. Thirteen others have been infected with anthrax, six with the inhalation form and seven with the less-serious skin form of the infection.

Definitive test results released earlier on Wednesday confirmed the 94-year-old Connecticut woman contracted inhalation anthrax, the first case of the deadly disease in the United States in three weeks.

Connecticut Gov. John Rowland said in a round of morning television shows he had received the final anthrax test results from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) early on Wednesday.

“The CDC test came back positive this morning,” Rowland told ABC’s “Good Morning America” show.

The latest case, along with news on Tuesday that the offices of two more senators in Washington tested positive for traces of anthrax, could revive fears of bioterrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The Connecticut woman, who lived alone and had limited mobility, was listed in critical condition at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut, hospital officials said.

Since early October, four people have died and 13 have been infected with anthrax, a livestock disease that can be used as a germ warfare agent.

All of those infected so far have been associated with the mail, the media or Capitol Hill, except for New York hospital worker Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who died on Oct. 31.

Rowland said there was no indication how the 94-year-old woman had contracted the disease but that authorities were closely looking at the mail system and that postal employees would be given antibiotics as a preventive measure.

“We will treat as many as 1,500 postal employees as a precaution without any true evidence that it came from the post office,” he said.

Rowland said authorities had checked the woman’s local post office as late as Nov. 11 and had found no problems there.

“Now we begin to believe that something possibly could have happened after the 11th. But we still have no evidence it’s from the mail. It’s a mystery to us but the FBI and the CDC are going to continue to work on it,” he said.

LIVED ALONE: The 94-year-old woman, who lives alone in the farming community of Oxford, Connecticut, was admitted to the hospital last Friday with symptoms corresponding to pneumonia.