A nurse who was quarantined for three days at a New Jersey hospital after returning from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone is "very pleased" about being allowed to return home, her attorney told ABC News.
However, Kaci Hickox is still planning to sue the state of New Jersey for violating her constitutional rights by placing her in quarantine even after it was confirmed that she exhibited no Ebola symptoms upon her arrival from West Africa on Friday.
"When you look at what happened and how it happened, you come away with the sense that this policy was based on fear and politics rather on medical fact, and we can't have the politicians directing these kinds of important issues," her attorney Norman Siegel said.
Earlier this week, a mandatory quarantine was imposed in New York and New Jersey after a New York doctor was diagnosed with the deadly virus on Thursday when he returned from treating patients in Guinea, according to NPR.
After she was released from the hospital Monday afternoon, Hickox left for Maine, where she lives, after publicly criticizing her quarantine conditions in an isolation tent, the hours of questioning she was subjected to after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport, and governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo for "enacting quarantine policies, despite criticisms from the Obama administration and medical experts that the measures were unnecessary."
"First of all, I don't think he (Christie) is a doctor, and second of all, he's never laid eyes on me," Hickox said during a CNN interview which was conducted by phone from her quarantine tent outside University Hospital in Newark, adding that New Jersey Governor Christie was "just wrong" when he described her as "obviously ill," because she has no fever or other symptoms of the virus, according to the Daily News.
"Her civil rights were violated," Siegel told ABC News. "At a minimum, she could bring an action for damages. But I think her goal is to try to revise the current policies with regard to, for example, mandatory quarantines."
Ebola guidelines have been established by the federal government "based on solid science," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"I don't want to use the word mistake because I think when people do things, the governor of New York, the governor of New Jersey, they're doing it in good faith to try and do what they feel is the best for their constituents," Fauci said in an interview with "Good Morning America." "What we're trying to do is set the bar that's based on scientific data, but that's not to criticize or to put down a decision that an official might make wanting to go the extra mile. That's just judgment on their part."
Meanwhile, a 21-day quarantine will continue to be enforced on healthcare workers returning from West Africa to Maine, Maine Gov. Paul R. LePage said in a statement, adding that the patients will be actively monitored.
"We will help make sure the health care worker has everything to make this time as comfortable as possible," he said.
