Kari Hickox, the nurse sent into mandatory Ebola quarantine in New Jersey, spoke by phone this afternoon with CNN’s Candy Crowley–an interview the network billed as exclusive and the media-savvy nurse’s “first TV interview.”
Hickox, an epidemiologist who’d just returned from Sierra Leone, where she helped treat Ebola patients, has tested negative twice for Ebola and does not have symptoms, she said. “I’m perfectly fine.”
“I know there are reports of me having a fever in the airport, but I truly believe it was an instrument error. They were using a forehead scanner, and I was obviously distressed and a bit upset.” She went on to blame New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for justifying her forcible quarantine by insisting Hickox is “obviously ill”:
“I heard from my mother last night, who called me concerned. ‘Governor Christie just said in an interview that you were ‘obviously ill'”. And this is so frustrating to me. First of all, I don’t think he’s a doctor, and secondly, he’s never laid eyes on me. And thirdly, I have been asymptomatic since I’ve been here. I feel physically completely strong and emotionally completely exhausted.”