TABLE 2.

A week in the life of the Laboratory Response Network (National Capital region, Washington, DC)

Date or week in 2001	Eventa	Location
Monday 15 October	Letter opened in Senator Tom Daschle's office	U.S. Senate Hart Building, Washington, DC
	National Capitol Police first responders deploy and report rapid test positive for anthrax
	Office of the Attending Physician for Congress notified; initial material sent for culture
Tuesday 16 October	Establish hot zone; 6,000 nasal and environmental swabs submitted for culture over the next 72 h	U.S. Senate Hart Building, Washington, DC
	Positive results of initial cultures characteristic of B. anthracis	National Navy Medical Center (NNMC), Bethesda, MD
	B. anthracis confirmed by culture, PCR, and gamma phage testing	USAMRIID, Ft. Detrick, MD
Wednesday 17 October	Senate leadership is informed of 31 presumptively positive cultures	U.S. Senate Hart Building, Washington, DC
	Laboratory consortium informally constituted in National Capital region (NCR)	NNMC (Bethesda, MD), WRAMC (DC), NIH (Bethesda, MD), AFIP (DC)
Thursday 18 October	Resource and management planning: staffing, supply, containment (biosafety and biosecurity), information management, law enforcement	Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), Washington, DC
Friday 19 October	1,900 nasal swab cultures received and processed in clinical microbiology BSL-3 laboratories	WRAMC, Washington, DC
Week of 15–22 October	Level A LRN clinical microbiology laboratory granted level B confirmatory status by CDC	WRAMC, Washington, DC
Week of 15–22 October	CDC deploys EIS team to investigate Brentwood Post Office; eventually sets up environmental test processing in BSL-3 clinical laboratory	WRAMC, Washington, DC
Week of 15–22 October	CDC begins daily teleconferences to inform and prepare HHS daily press conference	CDC, FBI, WRAMC, NNMC, NIH, USAMRIID, AFIP, NVSL,a others

^aNVSL, National Veterinary Services Laboratories.