According to senior Pentagon officials, at least 51 labs in 17 states and three countries may have received live anthrax from the military -- and they expect that count to increase.

“We expect this number may rise because the scope of the investigation is going on and we will update these numbers daily until all of the investigation is complete,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said at a Pentagon briefing.

Investigators have pieced together that samples from those lots have been sent to 51 laboratories in 17 states, the District of Columbia, South Korea, Australia and Canada.

The states are California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina.

So far, the CDC has found live anthrax in 10 samples that were sent to laboratories for analysis.

“There are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection among any workers in any of the labs that have received these samples for the last 10 years,” Work stressed.

“We know of no risk to the general public. To provide context, the concentrations in these samples are too low to affect the average healthy individual.”

Live anthrax samples and dead anthrax samples are packaged differently with live anthrax samples marked “infections substance” on the packaging. “When we talk about risk to the public and what’s happening with this box, and workers who might have handled this box in the transportation chain, we believe that the risk is zero for the general public as well as the people who’ve handled this box,” Commander Franca Jones, the director of Medical Programs for the DOD’s chemical and biological programs said. “One milliliter of liquid is not going to come out of this box. ”