Nurse criticizes airport Ebola screening

A nurse who was quarantined after revealing during an Ebola screening that she had traveled to Sierra Leone is criticizing officials at Newark Liberty International Airport for the way they conducted enhanced screening for symptoms of the disease. The enhanced screenings were put in place by the Obama administration. 

“This is not a situation I would wish on anyone, and I am scared for those who will follow me,” the nurse, Kaci Hickox, wrote in an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News. 

“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,” she continued.  “I am scared that, like me, they will arrive and see a frenzy of disorganization, fear and, most frightening, quarantine.” 

{mosads}Hickox was the first person quarantined under New Jersey’s strict anti-Ebola protocols. She has not shown symptoms of Ebola, but state officials quarantined her out of an abundance of caution, after another returning healthcare worker in New York City was confirmed to have the virus. 

Hickox said she was treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders. 

She wrote in her op-ed that she was held by airport officials for hours and given little information about the quarantine protocols that were being followed despite having a temperature that was below the 100.3 degrees Fahrenheit threshold that has been set by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 

“One after another, people asked me questions,” she wrote. “Some introduced themselves, some didn’t. One man who must have been an immigration officer because he was wearing a weapon belt that I could see protruding from his white coveralls barked questions at me as if I was a criminal. 

“I was tired, hungry and confused, but I tried to remain calm,” Hickox continued. “My temperature was taken using a forehead scanner and it read a temperature of 98. I was feeling physically healthy but emotionally exhausted. Three hours passed. No one seemed to be in charge. No one would tell me what was going on or what would happen to me.” 

New Jersey officials have come under fire for their handling of Hickox since her return from Sierra Leone.  

The Obama administration requires travelers flying from countries battling the Ebola outbreak to fly to one of five airports where enhanced screenings have been set up. Newark is one of five airports. The others are Washington’s Dulles, Chicago’s O’Hare, New York’s John F. Kennedy and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson.