NEW YORK – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week refused to release a cruise ship passenger exposed to hantavirus in early May from a quarantine facility in Nebraska, despite a federal medical review that said there's no need to confine her far from her Florida home.
The order from Kennedy, one of the nation’s most prominent critics of vaccine mandates, lockdowns and other government public health restrictions, spurred outrage from some advocates and legal scholars, who called it illegal and rooted in politics rather than public health.
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Five weeks after she left the cruise ship, the passenger, Angela Perryman, is still symptom-free. She remained in quarantine as of Tuesday.
“I want to be able to walk outside and put my feet in the grass,” Perryman said in an interview. “I want to be able to feel fresh air on my face when I want to. I want to be able to see people that are not in full PPE. I don’t want to be dehumanized anymore.”
Courtney Spencer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the state of Florida chose not to comply with federal requirements for how tightly to monitor Perryman if she returned home. Perryman needs to be quarantined to protect both herself and her community, Spencer said.
Because symptoms of hantavirus have taken as long as 42 days to appear in previous outbreaks, the Americans at the Nebraska facility were to be monitored either there or at home for 42 days — a period set to expire at the end of the day on Sunday, June 21.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert who helped shape current federal quarantine regulations, called the decision to keep Perryman in Nebraska “an egregious violation” of a U.S. citizen’s rights.
“She’s being held, deprived of her liberty,” Gostin said, adding that a broad medical consensus supports allowing her to complete quarantine at home.
Kennedy's order strays from the CDC official's recommendation
Kennedy's order keeping Perryman in Nebraska quarantine came Monday. It followed a medical review earlier this month that was overseen by Dr. Michael Bell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency within Kennedy's HHS.
Bell reviewed testimony from CDC officials and an outside medical expert concerning Perryman’s challenge to an earlier order confining her to the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Bell said federal officials insisted that anyone returning home needed daily in-person monitoring and round-the-clock surveillance by local law enforcement or public officials.
Florida officials refused those conditions — which Gostin called “overkill” and a “waste of resources” — and proposed instead that Perryman simply do once-daily temperature checks and symptom assessments.
Experts at the meeting agreed that Florida's proposal was reasonable. Bell recommended Perryman be allowed to go home, according to a June 11 report obtained by The Associated Press. Kennedy signed the quarantine order anyway.
Perryman says prolonged time in the facility is limiting
Perryman said life in the facility is like being confined in an airport hotel room. Sometimes she can go to its roof for an hour as armed guards watch. Nurses wearing gloves, masks and face shields deliver meals and take her temperature. She said it feels like a “prison.”
The 47-year-old learned that she would be required to stay in the facility until June 21 when Kennedy’s order was slipped under her door on Monday.
“I was appalled,” she said. “I was horrified that the secretary, who is not a physician, would override the doctor and violate the law just to keep me locked up.”
Perryman said she lives primarily in Ecuador but keeps a permanent home with friends in Florida. She said she wants the chance to cook her own food and spend time in more than one room, either in her home or a rental property.
Her quarantine was voluntary, until the order came
Perryman was among 18 Americans aboard the cruise ship who were evacuated to the Nebraska quarantine center on May 11. As of Tuesday, eight of the passengers were still there. The others went home earlier this month, after their states agreed to federal officials' monitoring plan. They'll be watched until June 21.
Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. However, the Andes virus at the center of this outbreak, which killed three people, may spread between people in rare cases.
At first, Perryman said, a CDC official assured her the Nebraska quarantine was voluntary. At his urging, and at the urging of the facility’s medical director, she agreed to stay until May 22 to protect public health because some medical experts say most people who develop symptoms do so within the first three weeks. She was later told she couldn't leave on that date.
Perryman and one other passenger received orders from U.S. health officials requiring them to quarantine at the facility until May 31. Quarantine orders, which can be enforced with fines and prison time, are a rare legal step that can be taken if someone objects to a public health request. The initial orders were signed by the CDC’s acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Perryman said she was told she could leave after May 31 if Florida accepted the federal monitoring requirements. When the state declined, she was ordered to remain in Nebraska.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy questioned universal government-imposed quarantines and argued that the costs of lockdowns should be debated, saying, “quarantines kill people too.”
Gostin said the recent decision clashes with Kennedy’s broader “medical freedom” message.
“This seems to me to drip with hypocrisy,” Gostin said.
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AP video journalist Shelby Lum in New York and AP writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.