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Monday, October 27, 2014

Christie Offers No Apologies to Nurse for Ebola Quarantine - New York Times

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N.Y. / Region |Christie Offers No Apologies to Nurse for Ebola Quarantine



http://nyti.ms/1zzFRoI






N.Y. / Region |​​NYT Now





Kaci Hickox, a nurse who recently returned from West Africa, was quarantined for the past three days in a tent at a New Jersey hospital. Steven Hyman




Even as New Jersey officials released a nurse they had kept quarantined in a tent since her return from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Gov. Chris Christie remained defiant about the way she had been treated. He said he would not apologize to her.


The nurse, Kaci Hickox, 33, who had been working with Doctors Without Borders, became the first public test case for a mandatory quarantine that both Mr. Christie and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced on Friday.


Ms. Hickox’s lawyer, Steven Hyman, said that she had been released midday Monday.


“I didn’t reverse my decision,” Governor Christie said from the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Fla., where he is campaigning for Gov. Rick Scott. “She hadn’t had any symptoms for 24 hours. And she tested negative for Ebola. So there was no reason to keep her. The reason she was put into the hospital in the first place was because she was running a high fever and was symptomatic.”



Earlier in the day the governor had said that he expected her to be transported to Maine after doctors and federal officials signed off on the plan.



Ebola in the New York Region


Latest Developments





  • Gov. Chris Christie said that he expected a nurse who has been quarantined in New Jersey to be transferred to Maine after doctors and federal officials sign off.




  • A 5-year-old boy who recently returned to New York City from the West African nation of Guinea is being tested for Ebola.




  • The first reported patient with Ebola in New York, a doctor named Craig Spencer, remains in "serious but stable" condition, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.




  • More daily developments on City Room.





After Ms. Hickox landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, a forehead scanner showed she had a temperature of 101, which prompted concern as fever is a symptom of the Ebola virus. Ms. Hickox later said that the reading came because she was flushed and upset. A later reading by an oral thermometer recorded a normal temperature of 98.6.


“If people are symptomatic they go into the hospital,” Mr. Christie said. “If they live in New Jersey, they can quarantine at home. If they don’t, and they’re not symptomatic, then we set up quarantine for them out of state. But if they are symptomatic, they’re going to the hospital.”


On Sunday, Mr. Cuomo relaxed New York’s mandatory quarantine, allowing New York resident health care workers to be at home and to be compensated for lost income.


But Mr. Christie remained adamant that there had been reason to quarantine Ms. Hickox in a tent at University Hospital in Newark, with a portable toilet, but no shower or television. “She was obviously ill enough that the C.D.C. and medical officials hospitalized her and gave her an Ebola test,” Mr. Christie said on Monday. “They don’t do that just for fun. That’s a very specific, difficult, expensive test to do.”


Mr. Christie then compared Ms. Hickox’s plight to that of any airline traveler.


“Any of us have seen people who are traveling and they’ve been stopped, whether they are late for a plane or whatever they are doing, they get upset and angry,” he said. “That’s fine. I have absolutely nothing but good will for her going forward. She’s a good person and went over and was doing good work over in West Africa.”


Mr. Christie said he had no reason to talk to Ms. Hickox. “My job is not to represent her. My job is to represent the people of New Jersey.”


Gov. Paul R. LePage of Maine said on Monday that the state had worked out protocols for returning health care workers. “We certainly understand health care workers’ desire to get home after doing good work in West Africa,” said Mr. LePage. “But we must be vigilant in our duty to protect the health and safety of all Mainers, as well as anyone who may come in contact with someone who has been exposed to Ebola.”


The Maine Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that its policy would be to collaborate with a person with possible exposure to establish a quarantine at home for 21 days after the last possible exposure to the virus.


“This protocol for a higher-risk individual will be implemented for the first time when a health care worker who came into contact with Ebola-positive individuals returns soon from New Jersey,” the statement went on, referring to Ms. Hickox. “Under this policy, Maine will make every possible effort to implement an agreed-upon in-home quarantine. We fully expect individuals to voluntarily comply with an in-home quarantine.”


Ms. Hickox’s treatment in New Jersey drew withering criticism from both public health officials and the nurse herself.


Ms. Hickox called her treatment inhumane and castigated Governor Christie for saying she was “obviously ill” when she displayed no symptoms of Ebola.


The policy announced on Friday in New York and New Jersey raised concerns that quarantine might cause fewer people to volunteer to go fight the disease where they are needed most. On Sunday night, Mr. Cuomo offered more details about how the policy would work, easing off his earlier statements.


Ms. Hickox has said that she was planning to take legal action to challenge her confinement and spoke out forcefully about how she had been treated.


Frustrated that she was quarantined, even though she had no symptoms, Ms. Hickox took to national television on Sunday to criticize Mr. Christie about the policy.


Ms. Hickox’s friends and family were not surprised that she decided to speak up.


“She’s not a loudmouth activist,” said Dr. Nora Rowley, a classmate at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. “But she understands the contagiousness of the virus, and now she has to come back and be subjected to a policy that’s not based on anything other than fear.”


Her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, a nursing student in Fort Kent, Me., said she had not planned on speaking to the news media but changed her mind after Mr. Christie said on Saturday that she was “obviously ill” when she knew she was not.


“Now he’s messed with the wrong redhead,” he said of her frame of mind.


Ms. Hickox first shared her story on Saturday in an essay on the website of The Dallas Morning News.


Correction: October 27, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the tent where Kaci Hickox is quarantined. The tent is in University Hospital, not behind it.




Emma G. Fitzsimmons, J. David Goodman and Tatiana Schlossberg contributed reporting.




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