Kaci Hickox, the nurse who refused to remain in quarantine after her return from Sierra Leone plans on leaving Fort Kent with her boyfriend. Kaci Hickox had recently returned to the United States, after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. She refused to remain under observation and ended up having a real standoff with the authorities, because of this. In the end, a judge ruled in her favor. It was concluded that the local health officials did not provide enough proof that Hickox needed to be placed in strict quarantine. Instead, it was decided that Hickox should submit to a direct monitoring, travel with public health officials and announce the health care professionals as well as authorities if any Ebola symptoms should begin showing.
Authorities wanted Hickox to remain inside her home for 21 days. The incubation period for the deadly Ebola virus is 21 days. She had tested negative for Ebola, and did not present any symptoms up to this day. As soon as the 21 days pass, Hickox and her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur plan on leaving. They did not specify where they would go. The 21 day monitoring period expires on Monday. Kaci Hickox said the fight was not over. She declared: “We are going to southern Maine and will decide what’s next from there”. They stayed in Fort Kent because her boyfriend studied there. However, she said he has since withdrawn from school. Wilbur said that the school he attended refused to allow him to return to classes. A spokesperson for the University of Maine declared that he regrets that Wilbur characterized their efforts to accommodate him as insufficient.
Dan Demeritt declared: “Officials at the University of Maine have put forth a tremendous amount of work to educate people about the threats of Ebola, but we still had concerns about safety and security and we were working with law enforcement and health officials and unfortunately we weren’t able to accommodate Ted in a manner he was satisfied with”. Hickox’s case bacame well-known right after she had returned from Sierra Leone. At the airport she presented an elevated temperature and was put into an isolation tent as a safety precaution. Last week, Hickox made the following statement: “The biggest reason that I fought is because I, you know, felt so much fear and confusion, and I imagined what my fellow aid workers were going to feel if they came back to this same situation and the more I thought about the fact that these policies are being made by politicians, really not the experts in the field, the more I felt like I had no choice but to fight back..”