Overview
- On Monday, Kennedy signed an order that keeps Angela Perryman confined at the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha despite a CDC quarantine medical reviewer saying she could finish monitoring at home.
- Dr. Michael Bell of the CDC recommended rescinding the federal order and allowing home-based monitoring under Florida oversight, but Florida declined the federal demand for daily in-person checks and round-the-clock surveillance.
- The quarantine traces to an Andes hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius that killed three people and prompted repatriation and 42-day monitoring for about two dozen U.S. passengers because symptoms can appear up to six weeks after exposure.
- Perryman says the confinement feels like a prison and legal experts call the move a serious deprivation of liberty, while HHS defends the order by citing the virus’s high reported fatality rate and the lack of agreed state monitoring.
- The formal 42-day observation window for exposed passengers is set to end around June 21–22, several people have already returned home under state monitoring, and the case could prompt legal challenges and scrutiny of federal quarantine practice.