Newark Airport was scarier than Ebola-plagued Sierra Leone for a volunteer nurse put under quarantine when she returned to the US after a grueling, two-day journey.
“I am scared about how health care workers will be treated at airports when they declare that they have been fighting Ebola in West Africa,” Kaci Hickox said in an essay published Saturday in The Dallas Morning News.
“I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine,” Hickox wrote.
Hickox, who works for Doctors Without Borders, arrived at Newark Airport at 1 p.m. Friday and waited in a quarantine office until 7 p.m. before she was finally put in an ambulance for a sirens-blaring ride to University Hospital.
“There is a notable lack of clarity about the new guidelines announced yesterday by state authorities in New York and New Jersey,” said Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders.
Delaunay urged urged “fair and reasonable treatment” for health workers returning home after fighting the Ebola outbreak.
Gov. Cuomo — who on Friday announced the mandatory airport quarantine with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — declined Saturday to second-guess officials’ treatment of Hickox.
“This is an evolutionary medical process for everyone and it’s a learning process for everyone, and none of this is pleasant,” Cuomo said. “It’s not going to be pleasant for anyone.”
Nurse Kaci HickoxPhoto: Facebook
In her essay, Hickox wrote that after she told an immigration officer she had just arrived from West Africa, she was escorted to a quarantine room, where everyone she met wore protective gear.
“One after another, people asked me questions. Some introduced themselves, some didn’t.”
A man who appeared to be an immigration officer because he wore a weapon belt “barked questions at me as if I was a criminal,” Hickox said.
A worker used a forehead scanner to measure her temperature — 98 degrees.
Four hours after her arrival, a worker took her temperature again — this time, it was 101 degrees. “You have a fever now,” the worker said.
“I explained that an oral thermometer would be more accurate and that the forehead scanner was recording an elevated temperature because I was flushed and upset,” Hickox said.
Later at University Hospital, a doctor took her temperature with an oral thermometer. It was 98.6 degrees — normal. “There’s no way you have a fever,” he said. A blood test for Ebola came back negative.
“I sat alone in the isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal,” Hickox said. “Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?”
Hickox remained in isolation Saturday under New York and New Jersey rules requiring her to be quarantined 21 days.
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