A Florida woman who has been quarantined at a Nebraska medical facility since May following hantavirus exposure is being held against her will under an order signed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., her attorney said.
“It’s an unfair system,” attorney Steven Hyman told JS on Tuesday of Angela Perryman’s order to remain at the University of Nebraska Medical Center under lock and key.
“Florida is willing to accept her and supervise her, and all this talk about freedom and fighting the COVID and the mandates … fly in the face of what Kennedy is doing,” Hyman said of the health secretary, who opposed COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic and likened following mask mandates to “living like a slave.”
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Kennedy personally signed an order on Monday to continue quarantining Perryman despite a quarantine medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluding last week that she could leave and be adequately monitored at home.
Kennedy’s order did not give a reason for overriding Dr. Michael Bell’s conclusion, only stating that it was “necessary to protect public health,” according to a copy obtained by Inside Medicine.
“They’re polite and they’re not using physical violence against me, but otherwise it’s a prison,” Perryman told The New York Times on Monday of her now weekslong quarantine.
An HHS spokesperson defended Kennedy’s decision in a statement to JS late Tuesday afternoon that cited the high fatality rate for people infected with the Andes virus, which is a strain of hantavirus that Perryman could have been infected with.
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“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,” said Courtney Spencer. “In the absence of proper home monitoring by state authorities, the Administration’s quarantine order is necessary to ensure both Ms. Perryman’s and her community’s wellbeing.”
Perryman was one of more than a dozen people quarantining at the Nebraska facility after being exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship. Initially, federal health officials said the cruise passengers could leave at any time and self-monitor for symptoms at home.
Health officials later reversed this decision and said everyone had to stay at the quarantine facility for at least two weeks. Then, they said people could not leave unless health officials in their home state agreed to conduct in-person monitoring and station a 24-hour guard outside their door, as the Times previously reported.
Perryman must now remain at the facility until June 22, said Hyman.
“It clearly is a political statement by him,” he said of Kennedy, who does not have any formal medical background, “because the medical reviewer made it very clear that there was no medical basis for either the in-person monitoring or the fact of having a guard.”
Perryman is currently the only person who is trying to leave the facility, Hyman said. And health officials in Florida, where Perryman has requested to self-quarantine, have refused HHS’s strict demands to secure her release.
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health told JS that the state is willing to facilitate Perryman’s return ― “and any appropriate public health monitoring consistent with established public health practices” ― but said the state won’t provide “round-the-clock surveillance measures.”
“The state does not believe unnecessarily intrusive restrictions are warranted when established public health practices can effectively protect both public health and personal freedom,” DOH Communications Director Brian Wright said in a statement.
Representatives with the CDC did not immediately respond to JS’s requests for comment.