Perryman, an American passenger who returned to the United States after the MV Hondius cruise ship was hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, told NPR that her experience with federal quarantine rules has become a dispute over both public-health risk and civil liberties. She said she trusted federal officials when she and 17 other Americans flew back to the country after the outbreak, according to the NPR report.
NPR reported that Perryman spent time at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska under an arrangement she understood as voluntary, and she said officials avoided even using the word “quarantine.” Perryman told NPR that she developed a plan to leave Omaha and monitor herself for the virus in Florida.
But Perryman said that when she and “at least one other passenger” tried to leave, they were handed a legal order dated May 18 requiring them to remain confined until the end of the month, according to NPR. Perryman said she is angry and that she feels she is being detained against her will, adding that she believes she is being held “in a federal facility in Nebraska” as part of a mandatory quarantine.
“I am angry. I feel betrayed,” Perryman said in the interview reported by NPR. She also said: “I’m being imprisoned. It’s a nice prison. But this is a prison. Let’s be clear: I am being detained against my will.” NPR reported that federal officials did not respond to its questions.
Public-health experts have framed the episode as unusual in recent U.S. practice, NPR said. The report stated that it is the first time the federal government has issued a mandatory quarantine order since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and only the second time in about a half century.
Perryman told NPR that she does not dispute that hantavirus can pose a serious threat. She said she does not understand why she could not take her own temperature daily and watch for symptoms at home, like about two dozen other passengers who returned from the ship, NPR reported. She said her contact with a passenger who became ill was limited and that she has not had symptoms.
According to NPR, Perryman said she is aware that three passengers who were on the Dutch ship died, and she emphasized she wants to follow public-health rules in a way that would allow her to live normally while remaining careful. She told NPR she is “absolutely fine with home quarantine” and that she is “absolutely fine with being monitored by public health officials,” while describing the confinement as causing stress.
Perryman said she plans to challenge the legal basis for her confinement, arguing that if authorities can order her held on what she sees as insufficient grounds, similar orders could be used against others. She told NPR she is not optimistic she can win freedom before the quarantine is supposed to end in 10 days.
NPR also described competing views from legal and public-health experts about whether the CDC order is on solid ground. Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, told NPR that “The evidence in favor of CDC is very strong,” saying in an email follow-up that the risk of person-to-person spread and the need to separate exposed people support the order, NPR reported. But Gostin added that the risk of transmission from an asymptomatic person is exceedingly low and approaches zero if someone remains asymptomatic under home-based supervision.
James Hodge, director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University, told NPR that Perryman could make a due-process argument if the government lacks sufficient direct evidence about the real risks she presents or about whether home quarantine would be inadequate. He said that without more direct evidence and information about adherence to less restrictive options, the confinement could raise a legal challenge based on “infring[ing] my liberty without direct sufficient evidence,” NPR reported.
In the NPR account, the federal government’s approach is also being tested against the way it has communicated quarantine status publicly. Perryman said officials were sensitive to backlash against pandemic lockdowns and mandates, and that they avoided the word “quarantine,” even though she later received a mandatory order.
Given how rare mandatory federal quarantine orders are in the current era, the dispute is likely to focus on what evidence is required to justify continued federal confinement of an exposed but asymptomatic person, and whether less restrictive monitoring can address the public-health concern.