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| Ebola outbreak: Nurse Kaci Hickox defies quarantine | Ebola outbreak: Nurse Kaci Hickox defies quarantine |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| A US nurse who returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone has defied a quarantine order, leaving her house in Maine for a brief bike ride. | |
| Kaci Hickox maintains isolation is unnecessary, as she has no symptoms and has tested negative for Ebola. | |
| Maine officials have vowed to go to court to try to enforce the quarantine. | |
| About 5,000 people have died of the disease in West Africa, but only nine patients have been treated for the virus on US soil. | About 5,000 people have died of the disease in West Africa, but only nine patients have been treated for the virus on US soil. |
| More than 13,700 people have been sickened in the Ebola outbreak, the vast majority in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. | |
| Ebola, which is only spread through close contact with the bodily fluids of a sick patient, has a 21-day incubation period. | |
| US officials are at odds over whether American healthcare workers who return from treating Ebola patients in West Africa should be forced into quarantine until that period has expired. | |
| New Jersey and other states had put quarantine rules into place after a New York doctor who treated Ebola patients in West Africa came down with the disease. | |
| But the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), America's chief public health agency, merely recommends daily monitoring of returned health workers, rather than enforced isolation. | |
| And President Barack Obama has warned that overly restrictive measures imposed upon returning healthcare workers could discourage them from volunteering in Africa. | |
| "We know that the best way to protect Americans ultimately is going to stop this outbreak at the source," he said on Wednesday. | |
| Ms Hickox returned to the US on Friday, landing at Newark International Airport. | |
| Officials say she had a minor fever, necessitating a quarantine at a Newark, New Jersey, hospital. | |
| Ms Hickox contested the quarantine regimen, ultimately threatening legal action. | |
| After showing no fever or other symptoms for a 24-hour period, she was discharged and brought to her home state of Maine. | |
| "I'm not willing to stand here and let my civil rights be violated when it's not science-based," she told reporters on Wednesday evening. | |
| On Thursday morning, Ms Hickox left her home on a bicycle, followed by police officers who monitoring her movements and public interactions. She returned home shortly after. | |
| Without a court order, the police were barred from detaining her. | |
| In other developments: |