WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York suffered its first case of inhalation anthrax Tuesday, and spores were detected in three more postal facilities in the Washington area and Florida as U.S. authorities battled to find those responsible for the germ warfare attacks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that a critically ill Manhattan hospital worker had been infected with the deadliest form of anthrax, adding to fears that the germ warfare agent was spreading more widely through the mail.

“The New York inhalational case is confirmed,” said a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based agency, which earlier on Tuesday had listed the unidentified 61-year-old woman as suffering from a suspected case of anthrax.

The latest case of the most serious form of the disease is the first in New York and the ninth in the United States.

The woman, who New York City Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said was “struggling for survival,” works in a storage supply room in the basement of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, which until a few days ago was housed with the mailroom. No suspicious letter has been found.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge expressed concern the New York woman had contracted the disease and said health- and law-enforcement authorities were retracing her steps.

“It doesn’t appear – I mean, clearly, she was not a postal employee. How she became contaminated, how she became infected is something that we need to try to find out,” Ridge told a news briefing.

INTENSIFYING CONCERN

Intensifying concern over anthrax, U.S. Postal Service officials said traces had been found at Friendship Station in northwest Washington and in nearby Dulles Station, Virginia, indicating the further spread of the bacteria in the capital, where several federal buildings have been contaminated.

In West Palm Beach, Florida, minuscule amounts of spores were found on three of 25 mechanical sorting machines tested last week for anthrax at a large postal facility, Postal Service spokesman Joseph Breckenridge said.

Investigators went to that facility, the first point of call for mail for Palm Beach County, after finding minute quantities of anthrax spores at four facilities that process mail for American Media Inc. in Boca Raton. A 63-year-old photo editor at the company died of inhalation anthrax earlier this month, while a mailroom employee survived the same disease.

Breckenridge said the amounts found were tiny traces, and none of the 600 postal workers were sick. Part of the West Palm Beach facility was cordoned off after the anthrax spores were found, but the area had been cleaned and reopened, he said.