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 The steps announced by the two states, which go beyond the current
restrictions being imposed by President Barack Obama's
administration on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea,
came as medical detectives tried to retrace the steps in New York
City of Dr. Craig Spencer, who tested positive for Ebola on
Thursday.
The new policy applies to medical workers returning from the region
through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark
Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. In the first instance
of the new move, a female healthcare worker who had treated patients
in West Africa and arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport was
ordered into quarantine.
She had no symptoms upon arrival at the airport but developed a
fever Friday evening, the New Jersey Health Department said in a
statement. She is now in isolation and being evaluated at University
Hospital in Newark. The agency gave no further details.
"Voluntary quarantine is almost an oxymoron," New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo said. "We've seen what happens. ... You ride a subway.
You ride a bus. You could infect hundreds and hundreds of people."
Cuomo had earlier in the day sought to reassure New Yorkers that the
risk of Ebola's spread in the city was limited.
He appeared at a news conference to announce the new quarantine
policy with the governor of neighboring New Jersey, Chris Christie,
marking a bipartisan teaming of two prominent political figures to
act at the state level, independently of the federal government.
Cuomo is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party led by Obama,
and Christie, a Republican, is widely discussed as a potential 2016
contender for the White House.
In Washington, Obama also sought to reassure a worried public with
an Oval Office hug of Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who was declared
Ebola-free on Friday after catching the virus from a Liberian
patient who died.
But Republican lawmakers, many of whom for weeks have called for a
tougher response to Ebola, continued their criticism of the
administration at a congressional hearing.
Cuomo said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
had agreed that individual states have the right to exceed federal
requirements.
A federal quarantine of healthcare workers returning to the United
States from the three West African countries was one of a number of
options being discussed by administration officials, Tom Skinner, a
CDC spokesman, told Reuters.
Spencer, 33, who spent a month with the humanitarian group Doctors
Without Borders in Guinea, was the fourth person diagnosed with the
virus in the United States and the first in its largest city.
Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, New York's health commissioner, said
Spencer was awake and talking to family and friends by cellphone and
was listed in stable condition in Bellevue Hospital's isolation
unit.
Three people who had close contact with him remained quarantined and
all three were still healthy, officials said.
Meanwhile, workers in biohazard gear began cleansing Spencer's
apartment in upper Manhattan.
The virus is not airborne but is spread through direct contact with
bodily fluids from an infected person who is showing symptoms.
STRIKING THE RIGHT BALANCE
The Obama administration has implemented a series of steps aimed at
preventing the further spread of Ebola in the United States but has
stopped short of a travel ban on people from Liberia, Sierra Leone
or Guinea called for by some politicians.
The United States is funneling travelers from those countries
through five airports conducting special screening for signs of
infection and is requiring them to report to health authorities for
the 21-day Ebola virus incubation period. The airports include JFK
and Newark.
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"We want to strike the right balance of doing what is best to
protect the public’s health while not impeding whatsoever our
ability to combat the epidemic in West Africa. Our risk here will
not be zero until we stop the epidemic there," Skinner said.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to discuss the
possibility of a nationwide quarantine policy but said "these kinds
of policy decisions are going to be driven by science" and the
advice of medical experts.
A senior administration official said it was important for the
United States to take "coordinated" action on the issue, noting
federal officials had met as recently as Friday morning, but have
not yet made a decision.
The prospect of expanding quarantines also raised questions about
balancing the needs for safeguarding public health with protecting
civil liberties, legal experts said.
"It's a severe restriction that the use of which should be very much
guarded, that people should have a right to an attorney and some
type of due process," said attorney Joel Kupferman, executive
director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project.
"When they quarantine someone, they should make sure that they are
not treated as a criminal."
NURSE RELEASED
Pham, one of two nurses from a Dallas hospital infected with Ebola
after treating the first patient diagnosed with the disease in the
United States, walked out smiling and unassisted from the Bethesda,
Maryland, hospital where she was treated.
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the CDC also confirmed that
the other nurse, Amber Vinson, no longer had detectable levels of
virus but did not set a date for her to leave that facility.
Pham, who was transferred to the U.S. National Institutes of Health
(NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, from the Dallas
hospital on Oct. 16, thanked her doctors at a news briefing.
Looking fit in a dark blazer and a turquoise blouse, Pham said that
even though she no longer is infected, "I know that it may be a
while before I have my strength back." She said she looked forward
to seeing her family and her dog.
The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976
has killed at least 4,877 people and perhaps as many as 15,000,
predominantly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the
World Health Organization (WHO).
Spencer's case brought to nine the total number of people treated
for Ebola in U.S. hospitals since August. Just two, the nurses who
treated Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, contracted the virus
in the United States. Duncan died on Oct. 8 at Texas Health
Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where Pham and Vinson were
infected.
(Additional reporting by Edward McAllister, Sebastien Malo, Frank
McGurty, Barbara Goldberg, Luc Cohen, Robert Gibbons, Natasja
Sheriff, Frank McGurty, Jonathan Allen, Ellen Wulfhorst and Laila
Kearney in New York, and Bill Trott, Steve Holland, David Morgan and
Toni Clarke in Washington; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumkaer)
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