Health care workers returning from West Africa can now spend confinement at home
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, Oct. 27, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Faced with pressure from the White House and criticism from infectious-disease experts, the governors of New York and New Jersey have eased their tough quarantine measures that required all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be forced into isolation.
Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey said late Sunday night that their policies now allow medical workers to be confined in their homes while receiving twice-a-day monitoring from health officials.
On Friday, both governors had announced mandatory 21-day quarantines for health care workers returning from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries ravaged by the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
Obama administration officials and much of the U.S. medical community criticized the mandatory quarantines. They said the quarantines would discourage doctors, nurses and other health professionals from traveling to West Africa to combat the epidemic that has infected more than 10,000 people and claimed more than 4,900 lives.
Kaci Hickox, a nurse from Maine, returned from Sierra Leone and was quarantined Friday in New Jersey under the new measures. Over the weekend, she became the face of medical professionals opposed to the quarantines. Despite having no symptoms, she was kept under quarantine at a hospital in New Jersey, confined to a tent equipped with a portable toilet and no shower.
Monday morning, Christie announced that Hickox would be allowed to return to Maine, where it will be up to local health officials to decide how they will monitor the 33-year-old woman to be sure she isn't infected with Ebola, The New York Times reported.
The initial quarantine measures, which exceeded current federal guidelines, meant that health care workers who had contact with Ebola patients would be tested and kept in quarantine for 21 days, the longest known length of incubation of the Ebola virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that he did not favor such a quarantine because it could discourage health workers from going to West Africa to help battle the Ebola outbreak, the Associated Press reported.
"The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go," Fauci said.
He added that self-monitoring works as well as a quarantine because people infected with Ebola don't become contagious until they start showing symptoms, typically a fever. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
source : N.Y., N.J. Ease Ebola Quarantines
