Move follows diagnosis of New York City doctor, but many health experts say quarantine is counterproductive
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
SUNDAY, Oct. 26, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The governors of New York and New Jersey are being pressured by the Obama Administration to rethink tough quarantine measures that require all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be forced into isolation, according to news reports.
However, The New York Times reported Sunday that Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey are refusing to budge, saying federal guidelines aren't strict enough.
Meanwhile, Kaci Hickox, a nurse returning from Sierra Leone who was the first to be quarantined under the new measures, plans to challenge the quarantine legally, the Times reported. Despite having no symptoms, she has been kept under quarantine at a hospital in New Jersey, where she has been confined to a tent equipped with a portable toilet and no shower, the newspaper reported.
The tougher measures, which exceed current federal guidelines, mean 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.
The new quarantine measures were first announced Friday.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday that he would not have backed such a quarantine because it could discourage health workers from going to West Africa to help battle the Ebola outbreak there, 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 do not become contagious until they start showing symptoms. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
The decision to impose a quarantine in New York and New Jersey came a day after Dr. Craig Spencer, a New York City doctor who recently returned from West Africa, tested positive for Ebola. Spencer's condition has worsened some, which is to be expected with the disease, the Times reported Sunday.
Spencer had been working with the medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders, helping to treat Ebola patients in Guinea, one of three West African countries hit hard by the disease. The other two countries are Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In an article published Saturday in the Dallas Morning News, Hickox described her experience at Newark Liberty Airport, which she called "a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine."
"We need more health care workers to help fight the epidemic in West Africa," she said. "The U.S. must treat returning health care workers with dignity and humanity."
source : White House Presses N.Y., N.J. to Rethink Ebola Quarantines
