Nurse Detained in New Jersey, Maine to Fight Against Ebola Quarantine

Kaci Hickox was detained for three days at New Jersey's
Newark Liberty Airport for fear she'd contracted Ebola.
Image:  Songquan Deng / Shutterstock.com
A nurse just returned to the United States after treating Ebola in Sierra Leone has threatened to start a legal fight over being quarantined without showing any symptoms of the disease.

After serving with Doctors Without Borders and treating Ebola patients, Kaci Hickox flew into New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport last Friday, only to be pulled aside at security when a forehead scanner registered a brief fever spike.  According to Hickox, an oral temperature taken at the same time registered no fever; however, she was quarantined in isolation in a tent for three days without a shower or flushable toilet.

After testing negative for Ebola, Hickox was released on Monday.   During her confinement, she waged a media war against Republican Governor Chris Christie, who wanted to enforce the 21-day quarantine policy for healthcare workers exposed to the disease.

Now back in her home state of Maine and still testing negative and showing no signs of Ebola, Hickox is facing further restriction in the form of another law that requires her to remain quarantined at home for 21 days, the incubation period for Ebola.  Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage released an official statement on his intention to pursue the quarantine despite Hickox’s protests.

“The Office of the Governor has been working collaboratively with the State health officials within the Department of Health and Human Services to seek legal authority to enforce the quarantine,” the statement announced on Wednesday.  “We hoped that the health-care worker would voluntarily comply with these protocols, but this individual has stated publicly she will not….”

But the Maine law requires that there be an “actual or threatened epidemic” in order to impose the quarantine, which has led Hickox’s lawyer, Norman Siegel, to declare the law unconstitutional.  “The conditions that the state of Maine is now requiring Kaci to comply with are unconstitutional and illegal, and there is no justification for the state of Maine to infringe on her liberty.”

Robert Gatter, professor of law and co-director of the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University School of Law, agrees that the quarantine can only be enforced if there is evidence that Hickox is a danger to her community.  "If the law is working the way it should, and if public health officials are doing what they should, the nurse will win until the moment she spikes a fever or has another Ebola symptom," he said.  “The challenge for the state of Maine will be to identify even a single case anywhere in the world, for this outbreak of Ebola or any other, where an asymptomatic person transmitted Ebola to someone else."

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