Anthrax confirmed in elderly Connecticut patient

OXFORD, Connecticut (CNN) -- A 94-year-old woman who lives alone in a small Connecticut town is in critical condition with inhalation anthrax, according to Gov. John Rowland and a spokeswoman at the hospital where the woman is being treated.

The woman had limited activity, didn't travel much and had no apparent connection with U.S. Postal Service or government facilities, which are tied to most of the previous anthrax cases, Rowland said at a news conference Tuesday. He described the anthrax case as an "anomaly."

"If indeed this is a positive report ... I'm shocked because I'm trying to figure out how it could have occurred. And that alarms me," Rowland said on Tuesday before the case was confirmed.

"There's no evidence now to explain where [the anthrax has] come from," said Dr. Howard Quentzel, chief of infectious disease at Griffin Hospital in Derby, where the woman is being treated. He said the woman's advanced age "would normally complicate" efforts to battle the disease, which has an 85 percent mortality rate.

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Rowland said no one else has turned up with an anthrax infection in Connecticut, and he stressed that anthrax is not contagious.

"No one should be overly alarmed but, at the same time, we are taking this seriously," he said.

Investigators from the FBI and the State Police sealed off the woman's home in Oxford, a town of about 2,000 people in southwest Connecticut, and they are questioning her friends and family members to trace her recent movements, Rowland said.

The woman, whose identity was not released, was taken by a family member to the emergency room at Griffin Hospital on Friday, suffering from an upper-respiratory tract infection, said Patrick Charmel, president of the hospital.

Based on the woman's symptoms, including a rapid deterioration in her condition, doctors suspected anthrax "within hours" and began conducting tests and treating her for the illness, Charmel said. Results from two different types of tests that can indicate anthrax infection came back positive on Saturday, and state health officials were alerted.

The Oxford woman is the first confirmed case of anthrax in Connecticut, and is the second case of inhalation anthrax in someone who has no apparent link to the media outlets, postal facilities or government facilities where anthrax has been found.

The other case involved Kathy Nguyen, a 61-year-old New York woman who died of the disease in October. Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant, lived in the Bronx and worked at a Manhattan hospital.

The Connecticut case could present even more of a puzzle because, while investigators have confirmed anthrax contamination in New York City, where Nguyen lived, there have been no reports so far of anthrax being found in Connecticut.