A nurse who treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone was being allowed to go to her home state of Maine after New Jersey forced her into quarantine, and the US military said yesterday it was isolating personnel returning from West Africa.

A dozen soldiers were in isolation at a military base in Italy, including Major General Darryl Williams who oversaw the military’s initial response to the Ebola outbreak, even though none are showing symptoms of the virus that has killed nearly 5,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Dozens more troops will be isolated in the coming days as they rotate out of West Africa, where the US military has been building infrastructure to help health authorities treat Ebola victims, the Pentagon said. Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, described the precautions as “enhanced monitoring.”

She was initially found to have no symptoms but later developed a fever

With concerns about the spread of Ebola to the US still high, a five-year-old boy who arrived from Guinea has exhibited a low-grade fever and was being tested for the virus in New York, city officials said yesterday.

The case of nurse Kaci Hickox, put into quarantine on Friday under a New Jersey policy that exceeded precautions adopted by the US government, underscored the dilemma that federal and state officials are facing in trying to prevent the spread of Ebola.

Governor Chris Christie, who has defended his state’s policy of automatic quarantine for medical workers returning from treating patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, said on Twitter that Hickox would be allowed to return to Maine and can complete her 21-day quarantine at home.

New York City police officers stand outside a Bronx New York apartment building yesterday, from where a five-year-old boy who arrived from Guinea was taken to Bellevue Hospital in New York after exhibiting a low-grade fever and was being tested for the Ebola virus. Photos: Reuters

The New Jersey Department of Health said in a statement that Hickox “has thankfully been symptom free for the last 24 hours” and that in coordination with federal health officials and her doctors “the patient is being discharged.”

“She will remain subject to New Jersey’s mandatory quarantine order while in New Jersey. Health officials in Maine have been notified of her arrangements and will make a determination under their own laws on her treatment when she arrives,” the department said. The 21-day quarantine matches the incubation period of the virus.

The department said she will be taken to Maine “via a private carrier not via mass transit or commercial aircraft.”

Hickox, the first health worker quarantined under the rules, arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. She was later put in isolation in a tent outside a hospital. She had said she planned to challenge her quarantine in a lawsuit, saying it violated her constitutional rights.

A lawsuit is now unlikely, her attorney said yesterday. “She was quietly happy,” said attorney Steven Hyman, who said he had spoken to the nurse by telephone. “She wants this part of her ordeal to be over. She wants to return to her life.”

Hickox publicly criticised her quarantine, saying public health experts and not politicians should be making quarantine decisions. The health department said she was “initially found to have no symptoms but later developed a fever,” prompting the decision to put her in isolation, it said.

Four people have now been diagnosed with Ebola in the US. The handling of the first case, a Liberian visitor to Texas in September who died, was riddled with missteps. Two nurses who treated the man contracted the disease but have recovered.