RFK Jr. Overrules Experts on Hantavirus Cruise Passenger

US 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 AP reports. 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. Five weeks after she left the cruise ship, the passenger, Angela Perryman, is still symptom-free. She remained in quarantine as of Tuesday.

Courtney Spencer, a spokeswoman for the US 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 US 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 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; he ultimately recommended Perryman be allowed to go home and self-monitor, but Kennedy signed the quarantine order anyway. (See more of the ins and outs of the case at the AP.)