NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week rejected the recommendation of his own medical experts and refused to free a cruise ship passenger from a Nebraska quarantine facility, despite a federal review concluding she no longer needs to be held far from her Florida home.
The decision by Kennedy — one of the country’s most outspoken critics of vaccine mandates, government lockdowns, and public health restrictions — has ignited anger among advocates and legal scholars, who are calling the move unlawful and driven by politics rather than genuine public health concerns.
As of Tuesday, the passenger, Angela Perryman, remained confined at the facility.
“I want to be able to walk outside and put my feet in the grass,” Perryman said. “I want to be able to feel fresh air on my face when I want to. I want to be able to see people that are not in full PPE. I don’t want to be dehumanized anymore.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Courtney Spencer, explained that Florida declined to meet the federal government’s requirements for how closely Perryman would need to be monitored if she returned home. Spencer said keeping the quarantine order in place was “necessary to ensure both Ms. Perryman’s and her community’s well-being.”
“The Andes virus has a 40 percent case fatality rate – 40 times that of COVID-19 – and a known incubation period of up to 42 days during which anyone exposed to this disease can become symptomatic and transmit it to others,” Spencer said.
Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert who helped develop the current federal quarantine regulations, described the decision as “an egregious violation” of an American citizen’s constitutional rights.
“She’s being held, deprived of her liberty, which is the greatest deprivation you can have. She’s committed no crime. And there’s a broad medical consensus that she would be perfectly safe to finish her quarantine at home,” Gostin said.
Kennedy’s order, signed Monday, came after a medical review conducted earlier this month by Dr. Michael Bell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — an agency that falls under Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services.
Bell examined testimony from CDC officials and an independent medical expert regarding Perryman’s challenge to an earlier order requiring her to stay at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Now five weeks since she disembarked from the ship, Perryman has developed no symptoms. Bell’s review found that one reason she hadn’t been permitted to return to Florida was because federal officials required anyone going home to undergo daily face-to-face monitoring and around-the-clock surveillance by local law enforcement or public officials.
Florida authorities rejected those conditions — which Gostin described as “overkill” and a “waste of resources” — and instead suggested Perryman simply conduct once-daily temperature checks and symptom assessments on her own.
Experts participating in the review agreed that Florida’s proposal was reasonable and that the federal demands were excessive. In a June 11 report obtained by The Associated Press, Bell recommended that Perryman be permitted to return home.
Despite that recommendation, Kennedy signed the order Monday anyway, stating that “continuation of the order is necessary to protect public health,” but offering no explanation for why he still considered Perryman a threat to public safety.
Perryman found out she would be required to remain at the Nebraska facility until June 21 when Kennedy’s order was slipped under her door Monday.
“I was appalled,” she said. “I was horrified that the secretary, who is not a physician, would override the doctor and violate the law just to keep me locked up.”
Perryman, 47, lives primarily in Ecuador but maintains a permanent home with friends in Florida. She says she wants to complete her quarantine in Florida, where she would have more freedom, be able to cook her own meals, and move around either her home or a rental property.
She compared her current situation to being confined to an airport hotel room for 23 to 24 hours a day. Occasionally, she is permitted to visit the facility’s roof for an hour under the watch of armed guards. Meals are delivered to her room twice a day by nurses wearing gloves, masks, and face shields. She described the experience as feeling like a “prison.”
Perryman was aboard a cruise ship traveling through the South Atlantic when an unusual hantavirus outbreak struck, killing three people. Roughly two dozen Americans were on the vessel, including Perryman and 17 others who were transported to the Nebraska quarantine unit on May 11.
Hantaviruses typically spread when people breathe in contaminated particles from rodent droppings. However, the specific strain involved in this outbreak — called the Andes virus — may in rare cases be transmissible between people.
Because hantavirus symptoms have taken up to 42 days to emerge in past outbreaks, the 18 passengers were to be monitored for symptoms through the end of Sunday, June 21.
Initially, the passengers were asked — not ordered — to remain at the Nebraska facility. Perryman said a CDC official told her at the time that her stay was voluntary. At the urging of that official and the facility’s medical director, she agreed to stay through May 22 to protect public health, since most people who develop symptoms tend to do so within the first three weeks. She was later informed she could not leave on that date, despite having no symptoms.
Perryman and one other passenger were then issued formal quarantine orders from federal health officials requiring them to remain at the facility until May 31. Such orders — which can be enforced through fines and even prison time — are a rare legal measure used when someone refuses a public health request. The initial orders were signed by the CDC’s acting director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.
Perryman said she was told that after May 31, she could quarantine in Florida provided the state agreed to the surveillance and in-person monitoring requirements. When Florida refused, federal officials ordered her to remain in Nebraska.
She is not the only one still there. As of Tuesday, eight passengers remained at the Nebraska facility. The others were allowed to return home earlier this month after their home states agreed to the federal monitoring plan.
The situation has drawn attention to an apparent contradiction in Kennedy’s public positions. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy raised alarms about governments imposing mass quarantines, saying in an interview for his former organization Children’s Health Defense that “quarantine kills people too” and that the costs of lockdowns should be openly debated.
“This seems to me to drip with hypocrisy, because the whole premise of Secretary Kennedy’s MAHA movement is medical freedom. And here they’re willing to detain somebody against their wishes,” Gostin said.
