US disease expert argues against Ebola quarantine

NEW YORK — The gulf between politicians and scientists over Ebola widened on yesterday as the nation's top infectious-disease expert warned that the mandatory, 21-day quarantining of medical workers returning from West Africa is unnecessary and could discourage volunteers from traveling to the danger zone.

"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," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Meanwhile, Kaci Hickox, the first nurse forcibly quarantined in New Jersey under the state's new policy, said in a telephone interview with CNN that her isolation at a hospital was "inhumane," adding: "We have to be very careful about letting politicians make health decisions."

The governors of New York and New Jersey announced a mandatory quarantine program on Friday for medical workers and other airline passengers who have had contact with Ebola victims in disease-ravaged West Africa, and Illinois soon followed suit. Twenty-one days is the incubation period for Ebola.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on yesterday defended quarantining as necessary to protect the public and predicted it "will become a national policy sooner rather than later."

"I don't believe when you're dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system. This is government's job. If anything else, the government job is to protect safety and health of our citizens," said Christie, who is expected to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. "And so, we've taken this action, and I absolutely have no second thoughts about it."

Fauci made the rounds on five major yesterday morning talk shows to argue that policy should be driven by science — and that science says people with the virus are not contagious until symptoms appear. And even then, infection requires direct contact with bodily fluids.

He said that close monitoring of medical workers for symptoms is sufficient, and warned that forcibly separating them from others, or quarantining them, for three weeks could cripple the fight against the outbreak in West Africa — an argument that humanitarian medical organizations have also made.

"If we don't have our people volunteering to go over there, then you're going to have other countries that are not going to do it and then the epidemic will continue to roar," he said.

Christie, traveling the country as head of the Republican Governors Association, said he was not worried that quarantining would discourage volunteers.

Neither he nor New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo provided details on what would happen to those who refused to cooperate with the quarantines. But Cuomo, who is up for re-election next week, said the order is legally enforceable, and expressed confidence that medical professionals would go along.

"It's highly unlikely that a doctor who is coming back, who just volunteered, who may be infected, wouldn't cooperate with the quarantine. I mean, it is exactly antithetical to what the doctor does, right?" Cuomo said on a radio talk show.

The quarantine measures were announced after Dr. Craig Spencer returned to New York City from treating Ebola victims in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital Center last Thursday to be treated for Ebola. In the week after his return, he rode the subway, went bowling and ate at a restaurant.

Hospital officials did not immediately update his condition yesterday but said a day earlier that he was experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms and "entering the next phase of his illness."

Hickox, the quarantined nurse, said she had no symptoms at all and tested negative for Ebola in a preliminary evaluation.

"It's just a slippery slope, not a sound public health decision," she said of the quarantine policy. "I want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and don't feel I've been treated that way."

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations who is on a trip to West Africa, said returning US health care workers should be "treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done."

In other developments, Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered twice-daily monitoring for 21 days of anyone returning from the Ebola-stricken areas.

The World Health Organization said more than 10,000 people have been infected with Ebola in the outbreak that came to light last March, and nearly half of them have died, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Fauci appeared on "Fox News yesterday," ABC's "This Week, NBC's "Meet the Press," CBS' "Face the Nation" and CNN's "State of the Union." Christie was interviewed on Fox and Power spoke to NBC.