- ‘Completely healthy’ Kaci Hickox says talks for amicable solution failed
- Police powerless to make an arrest without court order
Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend Ted Wilbur take questions from the media outside her home in Fort Kent, Maine on Wednesday evening. Photograph: Whitney Hayward/AP
The fight between a Maine nurse under Ebola-quarantine orders and authorities intensified on Thursday, as the nurse defied state orders and went for a bike ride with her boyfriend.
The nurse, Kaci Hickox, has argued that forced 21-day isolation orders are medically unnecessary and violate her civil rights. She has hired two New York City-based attorneys to fight Maine’s orders that she stay isolated indoors until 10 November.
“We have been in negotiations all day with the state of Maine, and tried to resolve this amicably but they will not allow me to leave my house and have any interaction with the public even though I am completely healthy and symptom-free,” said Hickox from her front porch in Fort Kent, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Armed state troopers have been guarding Hickox’s house since Wednesday, standing outside with a huddle of reporters.
Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox defies quarantine and goes for a bike ride near her home in Maine http://t.co/btoLYeWDPh pic.twitter.com/sLvaenGOUF
— ABC News (@ABC) October 30, 2014
Maine state police followed Hickox on her bike ride with boyfriend Ted Wilbur to monitor her interaction with the public. The Associated Press reports that Maine state police cannot arrest Hickox, because they have not obtained a court order to do so.
The nurse hired attorneys after she was questioned and detained at Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey on Friday. Airport officials questioned Hickox for three hours before detecting an elevated temperature with a heat-scanning gun (which researchers do not consider reliable), and bringing her to a nearby hospital where she was detained. Hickox was forced to stay in an isolation tent at Newark University hospital until Monday, when the governor of New Jersey agreed to her release.
The Ebola virus can have an incubation period of up to 21 days before infected persons show symptoms, typically first a fever. Ebola is only contagious when those infected are symptomatic.
To combat the disease, with which four people have been diagnosed in the United States, several states have adopted measures over and above what is called for by federal health authorities. Maine, for example, says it will isolate any healthcare worker returning from the Ebola-stricken west African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The isolation measures have brought widespread condemnation from the medical establishment and the White House. Aid organizations say the mandatory isolation periods will make it more difficult to recruit volunteers, who typically serve in west Africa for only a few weeks.
“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.
Doctors Without Borders, an international aid organization that responds to public health crises, commented on Hickox’s isolation saying it “strongly disagrees with blanket forced quarantine for healthcare workers returning from Ebola affected countries.” The organization added that “such a measure is not based upon established medical science”.
“Kaci Hickox has carried out important, life-saving work for [Doctors Without Borders] in a number of countries in recent years, and we are proud to have her as a member of our organization. [Doctors Without Borders] respects Kaci’s right as a private citizen to challenge excessive restrictions being placed upon her,” the organization said in a press release.