NEW YORK —A nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone is the first test case of quarantine policies now in effect in three states over heightened fears the deadly virus could be spread by health care workers returning to the United States.
But the sketchy details of how such quarantines will be handled drew sharp criticism from the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders while infectious-disease experts said many of the logistics about enforcement likely are still up in the air.
Kaci Hickox, a Doctors Without Borders nurse, remained isolated at a New Jersey hospital Saturday, a day after she returned to the U.S. and the governors of New York, New Jersey and Illinois announced mandatory 21-day quarantines for arriving travelers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa.
Health officials said Hickox was transported to a hospital after running a fever, but the nurse told The Dallas Morning News she was merely flushed because she was upset by a quarantine process she described as treating her like a criminal.
“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” Hickox wrote in an essay for the newspaper.
In the very early stages of Ebola, patients can test negative because the virus has not yet reached detectable levels in the blood. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it may take up to three days after the onset of symptoms for the virus to reach detectable levels in some patients, prompting repeat testing in some cases.
But Doctors Without Borders executive director Sophie Delaunay complained Saturday about the “notable lack of clarity” from state officials about the quarantine policies.
The aid organization said Hickox has not been issued an order of quarantine specifying how long she must be isolated and is being kept in an unheated tent. It urged the “fair and reasonable treatment” of health workers fighting the Ebola outbreak.
Indeed, health officials in all three states with quarantine policies did not return messages Saturday from The Associated Press seeking details about enforcement.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday imposed a mandatory quarantine of 21 days — the incubation period of the deadly virus — on travelers who have had contact with Ebola patients in the countries ravaged by the virus: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. A similar measure was announced in Illinois, where officials say such travelers could be quarantined at home.
The quarantine measures were announced after Craig Spencer, a New York physician working for Doctors Without Borders, returned from Guinea and was admitted to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital Center last week to be treated for Ebola.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was not consulted by Cuomo about the new airport regulations, and the governor’s warning Friday that “hundreds and hundreds of people” could be infected simply by riding a bus with an Ebola patient ran contrary to the mayor’s attempts to tamp down public fear.
“We understand in a fast-moving situation, sometimes there will be moments where the communication is not everything we want it to be,” de Blasio said Saturday after he had lunch at a Manhattan meatball restaurant visited by Spencer earlier in the week.
