Kaci Hickox News, Condition Latest Update: Nurse Goes Home After Spending Days In N.J. Ebola Quarantine
Nurse Kaci Hickox was finally allowed to return to her Maine home on Monday after being quarantined in New Jersey since Friday following her arrival from Sierra Leone where she worked to treat Ebola patients for five weeks.
Her protest against being quarantined in New Jersey overshadowed the debate on how to stop the spread of the virus in the U.S.
The 33-year-old nurse was detained at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday on quarantine orders for health workers returning from West Africa issued by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Upon landing in New Jersey, Hickox said she was held at the airport for several hours. When her temperature was first taken with a forehead scanner it read 98. But after several hours of waiting Hickox grew agitated and flushed, and the next reading taken by the scanner showed a temperature of 101.
Taking this to account, health authorities thought she had Ebola. Later, doctors found out that she did not have a fever, and that her actual temperature was 98.6.
Before she was released on Monday, Hickox was forced to stay in a quarantine tent constructed behind the University Hospital in Newark. Even though she subsequently tested negative for Ebola she was not allowed to leave.
During her quarantine, Hickox told CNN that she was placed in a tent with a portable toilet but with no shower. She was made to wear paper scrubs and had no connection to the world except her phone.
"The quarantine was extreme and unacceptable because I did not have any symptoms of Ebola, had tested negative for the disease, and I felt my basic human rights were violated," she said.
Hickox also wrote an article published in the Dallas Morning News where she described the events leading up to her quarantine and her experience since then. Her protest against her quarantine was supported by civil rights activists and aid workers who described it as a case of government overreach. ABC news reported that Hickox has hired a lawyer and intends to file a federal lawsuit against her quarantine.
