Maine’s top public health official has said the state will if necessary seek a court order to ensure a nurse stays quarantined in her home after returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.
Nurse Kaci Hickox, who tested negative for the disease on Saturday, said she would sue the state of Maine if officials did not lift a home-quarantine order and allow her to move freely by Thursday morning, arguing that such a mandate violates her personal liberties.
Mary Mayhew, the commissioner of the state department of health and human services, pleaded with Hickox to abide by the state’s 21-day at-home quarantine order.
“We do not want to legally enforce an in-home quarantine unless absolutely necessary,” Mayhew said on Wednesday afternoon.
Mayhew described the quarantine as “voluntary”, but said her office would seek to use the courts to keep Hickox in her home if she tried to leave. Mayhew said the process to obtain a court order had begun by Wednesday evening. One of Hickox’s attorneys, New York City-based Norman Siegel, told the Today show that they would wait for Maine authorities to physically apprehend her before taking legal action.
The governor’s office said in a statement that Maine state police would monitor Kickox’s home “for her protection and the health of the community”. A TV reporter with the local WLBZ news channel said at 1pm ET on Wednesday that at least two police cars were parked out front of the home.
Hickox, 33, said she is concerned that the quarantine requirements, which go beyond the recommended federal guidelines for how to monitor travellers arriving from the west Africa, were predicated on fear, not science.
“I don’t plan on sticking to the guidelines,” Hickox told the Today show from her home in Maine. “I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me. I am in perfectly good health and feeling strong, and have been this entire time completely symptom-free.”
“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,” she added.
On Friday, the governors of New York and New Jersey declared a mandatory quarantine for anyone arriving from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea who had had contact with an Ebola sufferer. Just as the policy was introduced Hickox landed at Newark airport in New Jersey.
She was rushed to hospital after airport authorities detected that Hickox had a slightly elevated temperature. At the hospital, an oral thermometer recorded a more accurate temperature of 98.6F. Despite testing negative for Ebola and displaying no symptoms, she was kept in an isolation tent with no access to a shower or television. From confinement, she published a scathing letter in the Dallas Morning News about her treatment. Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, released her on Monday, and she returned to her home in Maine.
Maine officials are asking Hickox to stay at home for the duration of her three-week isolation period, which ends on 10 November. Those infected with the Ebola virus may not develop symptoms until up to 21 days after exposure. However, people infected with Ebola are not infectious until they become symptomatic, typically after developing a fever and, even then, those infected can only spread the virus through body fluids, such as blood or vomit.
New York and New Jersey’s mandatory 21-day quarantine policy inspired similar requirements in states across the US, despite widespread criticism from the medical establishment and the White House that the orders are unnecessary, burdensome and could deter healthcare workers from volunteering in the region.
“We have to keep in mind that if we’re discouraging our healthcare workers, who are prepared to make these sacrifices, from traveling to these places in need, then we’re not doing our job in terms of looking after our own public health and safety,” President Barack Obama said on Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Jessica Glenza
