Washington - The state of Maine on Wednesday moved to enforce a quarantine on a nurse who has tested negative for Ebola and says she is healthy in a fight that illustrates how US states are struggling to guard against the virus without resorting to overzealous precautions.
Governor Paul LePage said he would seek legal authority to enforce a 21-day quarantine after nurse Kaci Hickox said she would challenge state restrictions and not follow guidelines to quarantine herself at home until November 10 as demanded.
Hickox, 33, returned to the United States last Friday after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, one of the three nations at the heart of an outbreak that has killed about 5 000 people in West Africa.
“If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom,” Hickox told NBC's “Today” program.
“I truly believe this policy is not scientifically nor constitutionally just, and so I am not going to sit around and be bullied around by politicians and be forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public,” she said.
Hickox initially was put into involuntary quarantine in a tent at a Newark, New Jersey hospital on Friday before being driven on Monday to Fort Kent, a Maine town of nearly 5,000 along the Canadian border.
In several media interviews, Hickox said she was in good health and had not had any symptoms of the virus that would indicate she had become contagious. She tested negative for the virus at the New Jersey hospital. Hickox said she had been monitoring her condition and taking her temperature twice a day.
“I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines. I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me, even though I am in perfectly good health and feeling strong and have been this entire time completely symptom-free,” she told NBC.
Also on Wednesday, another American nurse who returned home from working with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone agreed to quarantine herself at home in Texas, officials said. The nurse, who was not identified, is asymptomatic.
Medical professionals say Ebola is difficult to catch and is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person and is not transmitted by asymptomatic people. Ebola is not airborne.
Hickox told ABC's “Good Morning America” program that her last contact with an Ebola patient was on Oct. 21. The maximum incubation period for Ebola is 21 days.
Maine governor LePage said officials had hoped Hickox, whom he did not refer to by name, “would voluntarily comply” with the quarantine “but this individual has stated publicly she will not abide by the protocols.”
LePage said his goal is to protect Hickox, people who come in contact with her, the residents of Fort Kent and “all of Maine.” He said, “While we certainly respect the rights of one individual, we must be vigilant in protecting 1.3 million Mainers, as well as anyone who visits our great state.”
Lawyers for Hickox said Maine officials would have to go to court to get an order to enforce a quarantine and that, if the state does, their client would challenge it.
Hickox worked with the medical organization Doctors Without Borders and on her return and isolation by New Jersey, she also fought that state's Governor Chris Christie.
Some US states have imposed automatic 21-day quarantines on doctors and nurses returning from treating Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Republicans including Christie have accused President Barack Obama's administration of doing too little to protect Americans from Ebola.
Obama on Tuesday joined a growing chorus of critics - including public health experts, the United Nations and medical charities - opposing such steps as scientifically unjustified.
These critics say such policies may discourage badly needed American doctors and nurses from volunteering to help.
Setting himself apart from his counterparts in Maine and New Jersey, Texas Governor Rick Perry, a possible 2016 Republican US presidential candidate, telephoned a nurse who returned after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, calling her a hero. But Perry also said that the nurse, who was not identified, has agreed to self-quarantine at home with twice-daily monitoring by state health officials for 21 days.
Four people have been diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, with one death, a Liberian man who flew to Texas. Two of his nurses were infected, but both have recovered and have been released from hospitals. The only patient now being treated for Ebola in the United States is a New York doctor, Craig Spencer, who was diagnosed on Thursday. He had worked with Doctors Without Borders treating Ebola patients in Guinea.
Meanwhile, two US health officials attended a meeting in Havana organized by ALBA, a bloc of leftist-governed countries, to coordinate a regional strategy on stopping Ebola. It was the latest show of cooperation between historic adversaries Cuba and the United States on fighting the disease.
US military personnel and Cuban medical specialists are already posted in West Africa and prepared to work side by side. Washington has expressed appreciation to Cuba for committing hundreds of doctors and nurses to the region.
“This is a world emergency and we all should work together and cooperate in this effort,” Nelson Arboleda, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's director for Central America, told reporters in Havana.
The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved a strict, 21-day quarantine-like monitoring period for all US troops returning from the Ebola relief mission in West Africa. Hagel also called for a review of the decision in 45 days.
Reuters