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Status Brief

Developmental Milestones/Developments to Date:

Current Assessment/State of the Field:




King, Warren, “Washington State Bioterror Monitoring Expands To Animals,Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, pg. 1, Aug 30, 2004.

  1. “State health officials are expanding their early warning system for a bioterrorist attack by employing the help of rabbits, squirrels, mice and other critters.”
  2. “As part of the state’s biological-warfare defense, state veterinarians recently began monitoring unusual small-animal deaths for evidence of tularemia, plague or other diseases that could be cause by lethal agents.”
  3. “Small animals likely would show symptoms and die faster than humans after being exposed to a lethal biological agent.”
  4. “In the animal reporting system, plague and tularemia are receiving special emphasis because they are considered among the highest risks for an attack and can infect both animals and humans.  Anthrax, often mentioned as a threat, also could be detected in animals, especially cattle, sheep and goats, where it occurs naturally.”
  5. “Plague, tularemia and anthrax…can be easily disseminated or transmitted person to person, can cause many deaths, and can cause panic.”
  6. “Plague is usually fatal unless treated with antibiotics within 24 hours of onset.  Typically, those who are infected experience fever, weakness and rapidly developing pneumonia.”
  7. “If inhaled, tularemia bacteria can cause abrupt fever, headache, muscle aches and potentially fatal pneumonia, if not treated quickly with antibiotics.”
  8. “The new surveillance looks for ‘die-offs’ of vulnerable animals — a group of wild animals dying quickly without apparent explanation.”
  9. “Establishing a database of information on wildlife deaths will help veterinarians to determine quickly which infections are natural and which might be from bioterrorism.”
  10. “Unusual, unexplained symptoms may indicate the introduction of a disease from abroad, such as with the monkeypox outbreak a year ago.”

Biosurveillance, Monkeypox, Bioterrorism, Plague, Anthrax, Tularemia