File Photo of Kaci Hickox (Associated Press Photo)
A nurse who vowed to defy Maine's voluntary quarantine for health care workers who treated Ebola patients followed through on her promise on Thursday, leaving her home for a bike ride.
Kaci Hickox and her boyfriend stepped out of their home on Thursday morning and rode away on bicycles, followed by state police who were monitoring her movements and public interactions. Police couldn't detain her without a court order signed by a judge.
Hickox contends there's no need for quarantine because she's showing no symptoms. She's also tested negative for the deadly disease.
State officials were going to court in an effort to detain Hickox for the remainder of the 21-day incubation period for Ebola that ends on Nov. 10
It was the second time Hickox broke quarantine. She left her home on Wednesday evening briefly to speak to reporters, even shaking a hand that was offered to her.
"There's a lot of misinformation about how Ebola is transmitted, and I can understand why people are frightened. But their fear is not based on medical facts," Norman Siegel, one of her attorneys, said on Wednesday.
Hickox, who volunteered in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders, was the first person forced into New Jersey's mandatory quarantine for people arriving at the Newark airport from three West African countries. Hickox spent the weekend in a tent in New Jersey before traveling to the home she shares with her boyfriend, a nursing student at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.
"I'm not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it's not science-based," she told reporters on Wednesday evening.
Generally, states have broad authority when it comes to such matters. But Maine health officials could have a tough time convincing a judge that Hickox poses a threat, said attorney Jackie L. Caynon III, who specializes in health law in Worcester, Massachusetts.
"If somebody isn't showing signs of the infection, then it's kind of hard to say someone should be under mandatory quarantine," he said.
Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, has killed thousands of people in Africa, but only four people have been diagnosed with it in the United States. People can't be infected just by being near someone who's sick, and people aren't contagious unless they're sick, health officials say.
Guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend daily monitoring for health care workers like Hickox who have come into contact with Ebola patients. But some states like Maine are going above and beyond those guidelines.