Forcing Ebola workers into quarantine as some states did last fall is both counterproductive and morally wrong, says a group of prominent academics selected by President Obama for his commission on bioethics.
A debate over mandatory quarantines ensued during the height of the Ebola outbreak, when New York and New Jersey announced that all healthcare workers who had contact with patients in West Africa must be isolated for 21 days, even if they had no symptoms of the disease.
A recommendation released Thursday by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues reinforces the position taken by the Obama administration — that imposing quarantines on workers who appear otherwise healthy could discourage more from volunteering their services and isn’t necessary for public health.
“Workers were quarantined for 21 days, which meant they could not serve the purpose for which they are passionately and expertly prepared — which is saving lives, “said Chairman Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania.
A majority of Americans don’t agree with that position, with multiple polls showing that three out of four people support mandatory vaccines. A CBS news poll in October found that 80 percent of people want those returning from West Africa to be quarantined until it’s determined they are Ebola-free.
Gutmann chalked that up to panic among the public, which she says could have been avoided if health officials did a better job of educating people about how Ebola is and is not spread. While the virus has killed about 70 percent of those who contracted it, it is spread only through bodily fluids and not through the air like measles or whooping cough.
“We were relatively slow as a country on the uptake and as a partial consequence of that, public opinion veered in the direction naturally it would take,” Gutmann said.
“The science did not support the quarantines,” said commission member Nelson Lee Michael, director of HIV research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced mandatory quarantines in October after the first Ebola case was diagnosed in New York City, confirmed in a doctor who treated patients in Guinea.
But objections were raised by some returning health care workers, including Kaci Hickox, a nurse who worked in Sierra Leone for Doctors Without Borders. Hickox, who hired a civil rights lawyer to get her out of isolation, said the quarantine infringed on her constitutional right to liberty.
The Obama administration also pressured Christie and Cuomo to lift the requirement, rolling out new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that those exposed to Ebola patients voluntarily isolate themselves for 21 days.
Opposing mandatory quarantines for individuals without symptoms is one of seven new recommendations by the bioethics commission for how the U.S. should have responded to the Ebola crisis.
“Governments and public health organizations should employ the least restrictive means necessary — on the basis of the best available scientific evidence — in implementing restrictive public health measures, such as quarantines and travel restrictions, intended to control infectious disease spread,” the recommendation says.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America also opposes mandatory quarantines for workers without Ebola symptoms. “This approach carries unintended negative consequences without significant additional benefits,” the group said in a statement last fall.
Obama issued an executive order in 2009 creating the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. The group has also weighed in on ethical approaches to neuroscience and anthrax vaccine trials on children, among other topics.
