Even as New Jersey officials on Monday released a nurse they had kept quarantined in a tent since her return from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, an unapologetic Gov. Chris Christie dismissed those who questioned his handling of the case and denied that he had reversed himself.
The nurse, Kaci Hickox, 33, who had previously been working with Doctors Without Borders, became the first public test case for a mandatory quarantine that both Mr. Christie and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced on Friday.
One of Ms. Hickox’s lawyers, Steven Hyman, said she had been released midday from University Hospital in Newark. A hospital spokeswoman said that two black S.U.V.s with tinted windows were headed to Maine, with the patient as a passenger in one. The spokeswoman, Stacie Newton, declined to say where in Maine the convoy was going, or whose vehicles they were.
Fort Kent, Me., where Ms. Hickox lives, is on the northern border across from New Brunswick, Canada. It is about 640 miles from Newark, more than a 10-hour car ride.
A real estate broker contacted there on Monday afternoon said that the town was buzzing about Ms. Hickox’s imminent arrival, and that people did not seem to know whether there would be a public danger if she were to develop the disease.
The town is small, Mike Albert said, and there is only one hospital. “If anyone has any type of emergency, that’s where they’ll go,” he said.
The nurse’s departure, shrouded in secrecy, capped a whirlwind four days in which Ms. Hickox criticized Mr. Christie’s quarantine policy, hired a legal team to defend her civil rights and had the governor defending a policy that he announced in association with Mr. Cuomo.
The details of that quarantine seem to have evolved in both states since Friday.
“I didn’t reverse any decision,” Mr. Christie said from the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne, Fla., where he was campaigning for that state’s governor, Rick Scott, a fellow Republican. “She hadn’t had any symptoms for 24 hours. And she tested negative for Ebola. So there was no reason to keep her. The reason she was put into the hospital in the first place was because she was running a high fever and was symptomatic.”
After Ms. Hickox landed at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, a forehead scan showed she had a temperature of 101, which prompted concern because fever is a symptom of the Ebola virus. Ms. Hickox later said that the reading came because she was flushed and upset. A later reading taken with an oral thermometer recorded a normal temperature, 98.6.
“If people are symptomatic they go into the hospital,” Mr. Christie said. “If they live in New Jersey, they get quarantined at home. If they don’t, and they’re not symptomatic, then we set up quarantine for them out of state. But if they are symptomatic, they’re going to the hospital.”
On Sunday, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, relaxed New York’s mandatory quarantine, allowing New York resident health care workers to be at home and to be compensated for lost income.
Christie Announces End to Quarantine for Nurse
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said Monday that Kaci Hickox, who returned from working with Ebola patients in West Africa to be quarantined in Newark, N.J., can go home to Maine.
Video by Reuters on Publish Date October 27, 2014. Photo by Reuters.But Mr. Christie remained adamant that there had been reason to quarantine Ms. Hickox in a tent equipped with a portable toilet but no shower or television. “She was obviously ill enough that the C.D.C. and medical officials hospitalized her and gave her an Ebola test,” he said on Monday. “They don’t do that just for fun. That’s a very specific, difficult, expensive test to do.”
Mr. Christie said he knew that Ms. Hickox was “upset and angry; she wanted to go home.” He then compared Ms. Hickox’s plight to that of any airline traveler.
“Any of us have seen people who are traveling and they’ve been stopped, whether they are late for a plane or whatever they are doing, they get upset and angry,” he said. “That’s fine. I have absolutely nothing but good will for her going forward. She’s a good person and went over and was doing good work over in West Africa.
“But she needs to understand that the obligation of elected officials is to protect the public health of all the people, and if that inconvenienced her for a period of time, that’s what we need to do to protect the public. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”
Where Are the Most New Ebola Cases Being Reported?
Reports of new Ebola cases surged in western Sierra Leone during the week ended Oct. 14. Full Q. and A. »
0 new cases in the week ended March 20
Note: Data is incomplete for certain time periods and locations because of the difficulties in collecting data in outbreak areas. Many officials believe that the number of cases and deaths are undercounted, but by how much is unknown.
Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, The Humanitarian Data Exchange
Mr. Christie said he had no reason to talk to Ms. Hickox. “My job is not to represent her,” he said. “My job is to represent the people of New Jersey.”
Gov. Paul R. LePage of Maine said the state had worked out protocols for returning health care workers. “We certainly understand health care workers’ desire to get home after doing good work in West Africa,” said Mr. LePage, a Republican. “But we must be vigilant in our duty to protect the health and safety of all Mainers, as well as anyone who may come in contact with someone who has been exposed to Ebola.”
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that its policy would be to collaborate with an affected person to establish a quarantine at home for 21 days after the last possible exposure to the virus.
“This protocol for a higher-risk individual will be implemented for the first time when a health care worker who came into contact with Ebola-positive individuals returns soon from New Jersey,” the statement said, referring to Ms. Hickox. “Under this policy, Maine will make every possible effort to implement an agreed-upon in-home quarantine. We fully expect individuals to voluntarily comply with an in-home quarantine.”
De Blasio Criticizes Quarantine of Nurse
Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York criticized the handling of the case of Kaci Hickox, a nurse who was quarantined in New Jersey after working with Ebola patients in West Africa.
Video by Associated Press on Publish Date October 27, 2014.Ms. Hickox’s treatment in New Jersey drew withering criticism from both public health officials and the nurse herself.
Ms. Hickox called her treatment inhumane and castigated Mr. Christie for saying she was “obviously ill” when she displayed no symptoms of Ebola.
The policy announced on Friday in New York and New Jersey raised concerns that quarantine might cause fewer people to volunteer to go fight the disease where they are needed most. On Sunday night, Mr. Cuomo offered more details about how the policy would work, easing off his earlier statements.
Norman Siegel, a prominent civil rights lawyer also representing Ms. Hickox, said that “medically and legally, the State of New Jersey had no justification to confine her.” Despite her release, the legality of the quarantines in New Jersey and New York still “remains to be addressed and resolved,” he said.
More Ebola Coverage
Frustrated that she was quarantined though she had no symptoms, Ms. Hickox took to national television on Sunday to criticize Mr. Christie about the policy.
Ms. Hickox’s friends and family were not surprised that she decided to speak up.
“She’s not a loudmouth activist,” said Dr. Nora Rowley, a classmate at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. “But she understands the contagiousness of the virus, and now she has to come back and be subjected to a policy that’s not based on anything other than fear.”
Her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, a nursing student in Fort Kent, said she had not planned on speaking to the news media but changed her mind after Mr. Christie said on Saturday that she was “obviously ill” when she knew she was not.
“Now he’s messed with the wrong redhead,” he said of her frame of mind.
Ms. Hickox first shared her story on Saturday in an essay on the website of The Dallas Morning News.
An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the tent where Kaci Hickox is quarantined. The tent is in University Hospital, not behind it.