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 She was the first to be quarantined under a policy imposed on
Friday by the states of New York and New Jersey requiring all health
workers coming from Ebola-stricken West African countries to be
automatically confined for monitoring during the 21-day incubation
period of the virus.
The worker, who has not been publicly identified, showed no symptoms
when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday
but developed a fever after being admitted to University Hospital in
Newark, the state health department said.
Fever can be an early sign of the disease, which is spread through
direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person who is
exhibiting symptoms. No other details about her background or
condition were given, but a department statement said she was "in
isolation and being evaluated".
New York and New Jersey officials acted to begin mandatory isolation
of medical personnel arriving from Ebola zones after Craig Spencer,
a doctor who treated patients in Guinea for a month, came back to
New York City infected.
 The new measures apply to two airports serving the greater New York
City metropolitan area - John F. Kennedy International in New York
and Newark Liberty in New Jersey. They are among five airports
through which the federal government has recently ordered all
U.S.-bound travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea funneled
for special Ebola screening.
The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed at least 4,800 people
since March, mostly in those three West African nations, and perhaps
as many as 15,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Only four Ebola patients have been diagnosed so far in the United
States: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct. 8 at Texas
Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, two nurses who treated him
there; and Spencer, the first New York City case.
President Barack Obama has so far resisted calls by some politicians
to institute a U.S. ban on travel to and from West Africa.
But expanding mandatory quarantines to healthcare workers arriving
through all five designated U.S. airports is an option under
consideration by the administration, Tom Skinner, a spokesman for
the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told
Reuters.
NEW YORK CITY CASE PROMPTS TOUGHER ACTION
The two-state quarantine policy was instituted a day after Spencer,
a physician for the humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres
(Doctors Without Borders), tested positive for Ebola and was
admitted to a special isolation unit at Bellevue Hospital in
Manhattan.
City health officials have said Spencer, 33, did not begin to show
symptoms until Thursday morning, the day of his hospitalization, and
was thus not contagious before then.
However, public fears about transmission of the disease were stoked
by the disclosure that he had ridden subways, taken a taxi and
visited a bowling alley in the days before he fell ill.
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Three people who had close contact with Spencer since his return to
New York, including his fiancée, were quarantined as well, but they
were reported still healthy on Friday. Medical detectives,
meanwhile, tried to retrace Spencer's steps in the city in search of
others who might have been exposed.
After first seeking to allay concerns that Spencer put others at
risk by venturing out in public before becoming sick, New York
Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday that common sense demanded a more
cautious approach. He was joined by Governor Chris Christie of
neighboring New Jersey, marking a bipartisan teaming of two
prominent political figures to take steps going beyond national
restrictions being imposed by the Obama administration.
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 Duncan.
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the CDC also confirmed that
the second nurse, Amber Vinson, no longer had detectable levels of
virus but did not set a date for her to leave that facility.
Spencer's case brought to nine the total number of people treated
for Ebola in U.S. hospitals since August. Just two, Pham and Vinson,
contracted the virus in the United States.
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." (Additional reporting by Sebastien Malo, Barbara Goldberg, Robert
Gibbons, Natasja Sheriff, Jonathan Allen and Laila Kearney in New
York, Roberta Rampton and David Morgan in Washington; Writing by
Steve Gorman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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