NEW YORK: A nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone was being allowed to go to her home state of Maine after New Jersey forced her into quarantine, and the US military said yesterday it was isolating personnel returning from West Africa.
A dozen soldiers were in isolation at a military base in Italy, including Major General Darryl Williams who oversaw the military’s initial response to the Ebola outbreak, even though none are showing symptoms of the virus that has killed nearly 5,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Dozens more troops will be isolated in the coming days as they rotate out of West Africa, where the US military has been building infrastructure to help health authorities treat Ebola victims, the Pentagon said. Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, described the precautions as “enhanced monitoring.”
With concerns about the spread of Ebola to the United States still high, a 5-year-old boy who arrived from Guinea has exhibited a low-grade fever and will be tested for the virus in New York, city officials said. They said the results will be available later on Monday.
The case of nurse Kaci Hickox, put into quarantine on Friday under a New Jersey policy that exceeded precautions adopted by the US government, underscored the dilemma that federal and state officials are facing in trying to prevent the spread of Ebola.
Governor Chris Christie, who has defending his state’s policy of automatic quarantine for medical workers returning from treating patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, said on Twitter that Hickox would be allowed to return to Maine and can complete her 21-day quarantine at home.
The New Jersey Department of Health said in a statement that Hickox “has thankfully been symptom free for the last 24 hours” and that in coordination with federal health officials and her doctors “the patient is being discharged.”
“She will remain subject to New Jersey’s mandatory quarantine order while in New Jersey. Health officials in Maine have been notified of her arrangements and will make a determination under their own laws on her treatment when she arrives,” the department said. The 21-day quarantine matches the incubation period of the virus.
The department said she will be taken to Maine “via a private carrier not via mass transit or commercial aircraft.”
Reuters
