Ebola Scare: Health Worker Quarantined At Newark Airport Develops Fever

Update, Saturday, 8:40 a.m. EDT: The health-care worker quarantined after arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport Friday following her service treating Ebola virus disease victims in West Africa does not have the disease herself, the New Jersey Department of Health said Saturday, according to Reuters.

Original Article Appears Below

A female health-care worker who was placed in an Ebola-related quarantine in New Jersey developed a fever within hours of her isolation. The woman, who was not identified, worked with the humanitarian-aid nongovernmental organization Doctors Without Borders, bringing her into contact with Ebola virus disease patients in Sierra Leone.

She arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport Friday, becoming the first airline passenger to face a mandatory quarantine under plans announced by the governors of New Jersey and New York only hours before. These plans call for medical workers who had been in contact with Ebola patients to be subject to tight restrictions.

WABC-TV reported the woman was on United Flight 969, which was reportedly isolated on the airport tarmac.

The health-care worker is not a New Jersey resident, and was reportedly planning to travel to New York. She spent her initial hours of quarantine in the small Quarantine Station operated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the airport, according to Donna Leusner, a representative of the New Jersey Department of Health quoted by NJ.com.

The woman did not report any symptoms at the time of her isolation, but in the evening she developed a fever, the New York Times reported. She is now in isolation at University Hospital in Newark, where her condition is being evaluated.

While announcing New Jersey’s new policy of mandatory quarantine of high-risk people Friday, Gov. Chris Christie said, “There is no more ‘voluntary quarantine’ in New Jersey because you can’t count on people to do it.”

NBC News correspondent Nancy Snyderman caused controversy last month, when she was discovered to have broken a voluntary 21-day quarantine, after a member of her camera crew contracted Ebola while reporting in West Africa, as Newsweek reported.

New York’s first confirmed Ebola case, Dr. Craig Spencer, had also traveled to West Africa to help treat infected patients under the auspices of Doctors Without Borders.