Tested Negative, Nurse Criticizes Her Quarantine

A nurse who had recently worked with Ebola patients in West Africa and was placed under quarantine shortly after she landed in Newark on Friday has tested negative for the Ebola virus, New Jersey officials said on Saturday.

The nurse, who had no symptoms when she landed at Newark Liberty International Airport but developed a fever afterward, will have additional tests to confirm that finding, the New Jersey Health Department said in a statement. She was taken to University Hospital in Newark from the airport and will remain under mandatory quarantine for 21 days in accordance with a new policy announced late Friday afternoon by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

The governors ordered quarantines for all people entering the country through Newark Liberty and Kennedy Airports if they had direct contact with Ebola patients in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, even if they showed no symptoms of infection upon arrival. The World Health Organization reported on Saturday that there are more than 10,000 suspected or confirmed cases in those three countries.

A hospital spokeswoman, Stacie Newton, said the nurse was in one of four treatment areas, where she was in isolation.

The states' new quarantine policy goes further than recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which calls for self-monitoring but not isolation. The C.D.C., however, said the states had the right to impose such a policy.

Governments have broad powers to order quarantine when the public health is at stake, though individuals being quarantined also have a right to object and go to court to prove they are not a threat, said Norman Siegel, a civil liberties lawyer in New York and the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Quarantine orders have been upheld, for instance, in New York City, for people with tuberculosis who were not complying with their medication regimens.

'It does present serious civil liberties questions,' Mr. Siegel said on Saturday. 'Historically, we've had these kinds of issues occur previously, and the courts then resolved the individual liberty issue against the larger concerns of the public's health concerns. So it then becomes a factual issue, the fact that she tested negative.'

The quarantine policy was announced a day after a doctor who had treated Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person found to have the virus in New York City. The doctor, Craig Spencer, 33, remained in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan on Saturday.