Health law experts have condemned the Trump administration's decision to impose a mandatory quarantine on an American who came into contact with a hantavirus patient, calling the move 'authoritarian' and 'unconstitutional.' The quarantine, reimposed without scientific evidence, sets a dangerous precedent for handling future disease outbreaks in the United States.
Details of the quarantine case
Angela Perryman, a passenger on the MV Hondius cruise ship, was exposed to another passenger infected with Andes virus, a type of hantavirus. She requested to self-quarantine at her home in Florida, but was ordered by federal authorities to quarantine in a North Dakota facility with round-the-clock guards. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially recommended in-person symptom checks and guards, but later Deputy Director Michael Bell concluded that Perryman could safely quarantine at home with daily remote monitoring. However, on 15 June, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr overruled the CDC's medical advice and upheld the mandatory quarantine, citing no scientific rationale.
Legal and constitutional concerns
'Cavalierly detaining somebody for no good reason, no crime and no significant public risk is arbitrary, capricious and unjust,' said Lawrence Gostin, health law professor at Georgetown University. James Hodge, director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University, emphasized that health officials should 'never use unconstitutional, ill-advised, unproven techniques to control infectious diseases.' Both experts were involved in drafting the CDC's 2017 quarantine rules and opposed allowing the HHS secretary to overturn the agency's medical review. Gostin called the current situation 'a flagrant violation of her constitutional rights' and noted that 'Secretary Kennedy issued the order, and he's reviewing his own order, which is outrageous.'
Impact on public health response
Hodge warned that this incident could be 'really damaging' for public health, especially as the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues. 'CDC set a terrible precedent right now with the specific hantavirus cases,' he said. Heavy-handed requirements, such as institutional quarantine for hantavirus or banning travelers from affected regions, may lead to people evading rules or not reporting their activities, making it harder to contain outbreaks. 'The threat is not knowing cases that are actually out there,' Hodge added.
Hypocrisy in administration's approach
Experts pointed out the contradiction between Kennedy's past advocacy for medical freedom during the Covid-19 pandemic and his current use of compulsory quarantine. 'The whole raison d'etre of Secretary Kennedy's tenure has been based upon medical freedom, and yet here they're issuing immediately a compulsory deprivation of liberty,' Gostin said. He criticized the administration for using coercion instead of science, stating: 'Their first response is not public health, it's not science, it's coercion.'
