Defiant nurse Kaci Hickox vowed to break a mandatory quarantine order that would keep her inside her Maine home for much of the next three weeks.
And despite her troubles stateside, Hickox pledged to return to West Africa to continue fighting the deadly Ebola virus on the frontlines.
Making the rounds on morning television shows, the 33-year-old, speaking from her home in Fort Kent, Maine, promised she is “not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public.”
Maine officials have ordered her to hole up at home until 21 days have passed since she last contacted an Ebola victim where she was volunteering in Sierra Leone. And a state trooper stationed outside her home told NBC News that Hickox will be arrested if she walks outside.
“If the restrictions placed on me by the state of Maine are not lifted by Thursday morning, I will go to court to fight for my freedom,” she told Matt Lauer on the “Today” show Wednesday.
Hickox was detained in New Jersey on Friday afternoon after she landed at Newark Liberty International Airport. A forehead temperature scanner registered a fever, sending the nurse into a mandatory 21-day quarantine period, guidelines of which were presented that same day by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Hickox called the rules a “knee-jerk reaction” by politicians not founded in science, while Christie has maintained the rules are a fair trade-off to keep the people of his state free of the lethal virus.
Hickox was released from quarantine in New Jersey on Monday then drove back to Maine after her test for Ebola came back negative and she showed no signs or symptoms of the disease for more than 24 hours.
Her mandatory quarantine in Maine would run through Nov. 10.
Hickox said more appropriate measures would include self-monitoring by taking her temperature twice a day and getting medical attention if she began to show symptoms of Ebola.
“I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me even though I am in perfectly good health and am feeling strong,” she said on “Today.” “I have been this entire time, completely symptom-free. I am thankful to be out of the tent in Newark but I find myself in yet another prison in a different environment.”
She and her boyfriend, Theodore Wilbur, are back at their Fort Kent home, a town along the Canadian border.
nydailynewsLabels: ebola scare, kaci hickox, u.s
