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| 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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