Doctors are warning that forcing health care workers returning from Ebola-affected countries into 21 days of quarantine is not only unnecessary, it will discourage other health workers from volunteering to help.
U.S. nurse Kaci Hickox says she was treated "like a criminal" Friday after she returned from a volunteer stint with Doctors Without Borders. She says she was left alone in an airport interrogation room for hours, and given only a granola bar to eat. After officials mistakenly believed she had spiked a fever, she was whisked away with police escort to an isolation tent at a Newark hospital.
Although she tested negative for Ebola, Hickox spent the weekend in the isolation tent. The New Jersey Health Department said in a statement Monday that Hickox would be released and taken home by private carrier to Maine, since she had been symptom-free for 24 hours. She is planning a federal lawsuit.
Hickox's story came after the governors of both New Jersey and New York said they were imposing mandatory quarantines for all medical workers returning from West Africa, following the Ebola diagnosis of a New York doctor who had recently been working in the outbreak zone.
Now, several infectious diseases experts are warning that such measures are heavy-handed. Dr. Matthew Muller, the head of infection prevention and control at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto points out that Ebola is transmissible only after the development of symptoms, such as a fever.
"So a period of quarantine prior to that is not going to be particularly useful. The critical thing is to identify people once the fever begins and care to them at that point," he told CTV's Canada AM Monday.
Muller says health care workers volunteering to work in the Ebola hot zone are well educated about the risks of infection, and the need to monitor themselves for symptoms after they return home. He says these workers are usually part of regimented programs of self-monitoring with the groups that sent them to the Ebola hot zone.
"So I do think (self-monitoring) is important; I just don't think it needs to be a mandatory quarantine in a hospital setting or any type of enforced setting," Muller said.
Dr. Gavin MacGregor-Skinner, a public health emergencies expert at Pennsylvania State University, has helped set up Ebola crisis centres in Nigeria. He also trains health facilities in the U.S. about how to react if an Ebola case is diagnosed there. He says he has more than 100 consultants who want to return to help in West Africa but are now afraid to do so.
"Some of them are saying 'We can't afford to go to West Africa and to help save lives where we're needed the most… We just can't take the risk of being put into mandatory quarantine when we come back to the U.S.'," he told CTV News Channel from Washington.
MacGregor-Skinner says mandatory quarantines ignore science and are "completely irrational." The guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that his team has been following since the summer are adequate, he says, since they stress "controlled movement" upon return from Ebola zones.
"We take our temperatures twice a day, we stay away from commercial transport, planes, trains, ships, buses… I would stay away from large crowds. But it doesn't mean I can't go to my child's soccer game on the weekend, or enjoy outings with my family," he said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has also come out against mandatory quarantines, saying monitoring medical workers for symptoms is sufficient.
On Sunday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared took a step back and clarified that asymptomatic health care workers will still be allowed to complete their quarantines at home. He added they would also receive compensation for any lost income.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, meanwhile, is defending the mandatory quarantine as necessary to protect the public.
"I don't believe when you're dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system," he said Sunday.
Muller, like others, says he's worried that such measures will discourage health care workers from volunteering to help in the Ebola-effected countries.
He says workers are already committing to at least four weeks to volunteer, and "if we add on a three-week period of quarantine at the end, this may discourage some people from going to fight this problem at the source," he said.
The best way to ensure that a case of Ebola is never diagnosed in Canada is to control the outbreak in West Africa as quickly as possible, he said. "And to do that, we need to encourage people to go over there and help," he said.
With reports from The Associated Press
