HALIFAX (AP)--Infectious disease experts spent five hours taking swabs of living quarters and interviewing crew members after boarding a ship quarantined off the coast of Nova Scotia to search for traces of anthrax early Saturday.
Six specialists, armed with protective suits, masks and jugs of bleach, inspected the Wadi Al Arab, an Egyptian vessel anchored about 10 kilometers offshore.
They completed their search in the afternoon after taking swab samples from the 225-meter-long ship's cabins, living quarters, galley and bridge to determine if the vessel is contaminated with the lethal bacterial disease.
The team of quarantine and environmental officers also spoke with the ship's captain and all 30 crew members.
"It's just what we expected. Everyone is in extremely good health," Tracey Taweel, a Health Canada spokeswoman, said Saturday evening.
"There have no illnesses with the crew and they were exceptionally cooperative in terms of welcoming our team on board and allowing them to do the work they needed to get done."
The Egyptian vessel was placed under a one-kilometer exclusion zone when it arrived near the mouth of the Halifax harbor early Friday. That prevents anyone from leaving the ship or any other boats from getting near it.
Canadian officials will keep the bulk carrier out at sea until they can determine whether there are traces of the bacteria, which is suspected to have caused the death of the ship's chief officer, Ibrahim Sayed Ibrahim, about 10 days ago in Brazil.
They likely won't have the test results from the lab in Halifax until late Monday or Tuesday, Taweel confirmed. The ship would be released if it was cleared of anthrax or any other communicable disease.
"We're in a bit of a holding pattern at this point," she said. "We just have to wait until we hear back from the lab about the results."
A specialist with the Brazilian Health Department said the anthrax bacilli were discovered in the man's body after he died while the ship was off Brazil. However, a conclusive autopsy report had yet to be completed.
"The bacilli of anthrax was found in his body," Carlos Lopes told The Canadian Press from Brasilia, the capital of the South American country. He said it wasn't clear if the traces came from external sources or if they caused the death.
Lopes said the results of a second autopsy were expected to be available Tuesday.
Ibrahim died of septicemia, a generalized infection that spread quickly, said Luiz Malcher, the chief coroner of the port city of Belem in Brazil, on Sunday.
Septicemia occurs when toxins from the bacteria enter the blood stream and do damage to the organs.
He said there was strong hemorrhaging of the lungs, pancreas and brain, a symptom consistent with anthrax poisoning.
The ship was headed to an Alcan Inc. smelter on the Saguenay River in Quebec, but was diverted to Nova Scotia after it was learned Ibrahim might have died from anthrax, an infection that usually afflicts sheep and cattle, but which is transmissible to humans.
Officials know very little about what happened to Ibrahim, said to be an Egyptian in his 50s who was part of a crew change just days before he died. It is thought he died after the Wadi Al Arab left a Brazilian port about two weeks ago. His body was removed and the vessel was sanitized.
Malcher said Ibrahim had started feeling ill about seven hours after boarding the ship.
"He was found dead early the next morning," he said. "Before boarding Ibrahim was submitted to routine medical examinations and was found to be in perfect health, so it would seem that the infection occurred on board."
The ship, a 37,550-ton carrier, is owned and operated by National Navigation of Egypt.
Ibrahim traveled from Cairo and stayed in a hotel in Brazil while he waited for the Wadi Al Arab to arrive. His body was returned to Egypt after the autopsy, a federal official said.
Dr. Douglas Sinclair, an emergency medicine specialist at the IWK Grace Hospital in Halifax, said the disease acts quickly and usually presents symptoms when it is too late to treat.
"Patients get very, very sick before it's recognized," he said, adding that it is not contagious. "It's fairly potent."
It is transmissible to humans through anthrax spores, which killed several people in the U.S. following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Dow Jones Newswires 04-28-031341ET