The public already knows that the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in New York City went bowling, out to eat and took the subway and a taxi service a day before he was brought to the hospital and tested positive for the disease. But a new report in the New York Post suggests that the doctor wasn't up front about all of these movements, at least at first.
A source who spoke with the Post said Dr. Craig Spencer initially lied, telling investigators that he had been isolated in his apartment prior to exhibiting symptoms. It wasn't until after the authorities reviewed his subway card and other statements that he revealed more about his activities in the days before he was taken to Bellevue Hospital in an ambulance.
Bellevue Hospital is treating Dr. Craig Spencer, a doctor who has the ebola virus after working in West Africa. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
“He told the authorities that he self-quarantined. Detectives then reviewed his credit-card statement and MetroCard and found that he went over here, over there, up and down and all around,” the unnamed source told the Post.
Upon presenting him with this contradictory information, the authorities then learned he had eaten at a sandwich shop in Greenwich Village and gone bowling in Brooklyn.
Second from left, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, wife Chirlane McCray, and New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett engage with co owner Daniel Holzman, far left, at The Meatball Shop in New York, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2014, where Dr. Craig Spencer, an Ebola patient, ate just before he became ill. (AP/Craig Ruttle)
Dr. Spencer contracted Ebola while working with infected patients in Guinea with the group Doctors Without Borders.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that Spencer's condition remains serious but stable. No infection has been found in his fiancee but she remains under quarantine at the couple's Harlem home. No one else has been reported as infected, and city health officials said New Yorkers should not be alarmed about contracting the disease.
Policy debates about Ebola patients have escalated since the 33-year-old emergency room doctor came down with the virus. A nurse who into New Jersey and was not displaying any symptoms of the viral disease is fighting some quarantine protocols instituted several state on health workers returning from helping Ebola patients overseas.
Kaci Hickox spoke to NBC's "Today" show and ABC's "Good Morning America" from Fort Kent, Maine, where her boyfriend is a senior nursing student and where she was transported from New Jersey earlier this week.
She said she has followed the state's voluntary quarantine thus far. She had no contact with anyone Tuesday and will have no human contact again Wednesday, she said.
This undated image provided by University of Texas at Arlington shows Kaci Hickox. In a Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014 telephone interview with CNN, Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is "inhumane." (AP/University of Texas at Arlington)
But she doesn't plan on keeping away from other people.
"I don't plan on sticking to the guidelines," Hickox said on "Today." ''I remain appalled by these home quarantine policies that have been forced upon me even though I am in perfectly good health."
Her lawyer told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Hickox isn't willing to cooperate further unless the state lifts "all or most of the restrictions."
Hickox, who also volunteered in Africa with Doctors Without Borders, was the first person forced into New Jersey's mandatory quarantine for people arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport from three West African countries.
Hickox, who spent the weekend in a quarantine tent, said she never had Ebola symptoms and tested negative in a preliminary evaluation, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo were sharply criticized for ordering mandatory quarantines.
"I am not going to sit around and be bullied by politicians and forced to stay in my home when I am not a risk to the American public," she said.
On Tuesday, Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew said her department and the attorney general's office were prepared to take legal steps to legally enforce the state's voluntary quarantine if someone declines to cooperate.
"We do not want to have to legally enforce in-home quarantine," she said. "We're confident that selfless health workers who were brave enough to care for Ebola patients in a foreign country will be willing to take reasonable steps to protect residents of their own country."
(H/T: Fox News)
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
