We provide a formal proof of a conclusion due to Abakuks (1974) which states that the expected number of survivors in Downton's carrier-borne epidemic model approaches the limit (ρ /π)δ as the initial number of susceptibles tends to infinity. Here ρ denotes the relative removal rate for carriers, π denotes the conditional probability that an infected susceptible will become a carrier, δ denotes the Kronecker delta function and denotes the initial number of carriers.