Kaci Hickox, 33, returned from working in hospitals treating Ebola in Sierra Leone last week and has since challenged the mandatory 21 days quarantine imposed on exposed health workers.
Three days ago, she left hospital where she had been put under surveillance to return to her home, and today, a new video shows her going on a bike ride with her boyfriend.
State officials said they were preparing to file a court order to enforce a mandatory quarantine, but it would first have to be approved by a judge.
Last night, the nurse vowed that she wasn't willing to "stand here and have my civil rights violated."
She said she was fighting for her rights as well as other health care workers who will be returning from the Ebola hot zone in West Africa.
Kaci Hickox had been treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone for Doctors Without Borders, and said the charity organization has another 20 health care workers will be coming back to the US from West Africa in the next month.
"Most aid workers who come home just want to see their family and have a sort of normal life," she told reporters Wednesday night. "I'm fighting for something other than myself. There are aid workers coming back every day."
Hickox said she isn't committed to a quarantine that isn't "scientifically valid," she told reporters standing alongside her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, outside her home Wednesday night. The quarantine demand goes beyond guidelines put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which indicate that she can't spread Ebola if she isn't sick, doesn't have symptoms and no one is in close contact with her bodily fluids.
"You could hug me, you could shake my hand [and] I would not give you Ebola," she said
HIckox returned to the United States on Oct. 24, landing in Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, where she was questioned and quarantined in an outdoor tent through the weekend despite having no symptoms of the lethal virus.
Hickox registered a fever on an infrared thermometer at the airport, but an oral thermometer at University Hospital in Newark showed that she had no fever, she said.
After twice testing negative for the Ebola, Hickox was released and returned home to Maine on Oct. 27. Maine's health commissioner announced that Maine would join the handful of states going beyond federal guidelines and asking that returning Ebola health workers be self-quarantined for 21 days.
But Hickox vowed to break the quarantine because it wasn't based on science.
"I will go to court to attain my freedom," Hickox told "Good Morning America" Wednesday via Skype from her hometown of Fort Kent. "I have been completely asymptomatic since I've been here. I feel absolutely great."
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The title of this post is derogatory and inflammatory. As someone of African descent I would expect that we can contribute towards changing the narrative which the media hypes. Dubbing this lady an "Ebola Nurse" implies that she has been diagnosed with Ebola or is symptomatic of the disease. Even if someone is diagnosed with a disease it is derogatory to label them such…which is not even the case here.
ReplyDeleteEbola Nurse simply means nurse who treats ebola, not the other way around. But changed now.
ReplyDelete