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Maine Officials Prepared to Legally Force Nurse to Obey Ebola Quarantine

Some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion is revealed in this undated handout colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) obtained by Reuters August 1, 2014. | (Photo: Reuters/FREDERICK MURPHY)

Officials in Maine have said they will go to court to keep Nurse Kaci Hickox from violating her mandatory Ebola quarantine at her home.

Hickox, who returned from Sierra Leone last week while helping Ebola patients, was at first under mandatory quarantine in Newark, New Jersey. Hickox spoke out against her quarantine, saying her "basic human rights" had been violated because she was asymptomatic of the disease.

After the nurse hired an attorney who threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit against the state, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced that Hickox would be allowed to complete her quarantine at her home in Maine.

Now Hickox is saying that she will not follow the quarantine guidelines and is expecting them to be lifted by Thursday. "I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," she told NBC on Wednesday.

Maine's Governor Paul LePage said Wednesday that the state is prepared to go to court to ensure Hickox obeys the quarantine ordered of her.

"We hoped that the health care worker would voluntarily comply with these protocols, but this individual has stated publicly she will not abide by the protocols. We are very concerned about her safety and health and that of the community," LePage said, according to the Associated Press.

The nurse's attorney, Steven Hyman said because his client is asymptomatic she doesn't feel she is a threat to anyone's health.

 "Going forward she does not intend to abide by the quarantine imposed by Maine officials because she is not a risk to others," Hyman said. "She is asymptomatic and under all the protocols cannot be deemed a medical risk of being contagious to anyone."