Is the CDC overreaching with its coronavirus quarantine? These experts think so
Some quarantines and travel bans imposed by the United States in response to the coronavirus in China are overly broad and excessive, two public health legal scholars argue in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Law professors Lawrence Gostin and James Hodge write that the federal response to COVID-19, as the virus is now known, goes beyond how authorities responded to earlier crisis such as SARS, swine flu and Ebola.
The coronavirus had infected almost 47,000 around the world as of Thursday, according to the World Health Organization, and 1,368 had died. Most of the people infected with the virus have been in and around Wuhan, a city in central China’s Hubei province.
Since the outbreak started, public health officials have set up quarantine centers at military bases for U.S. citizens evacuated from Hubei. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered 200 people quarantined for 14 days after they were airlifted from Wuhan in late January.
The CDC has instituted a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone coming from Hubei province.
Those quarantines, the scholars write, “may be justifiable.”
“Hubei is currently a ‘hot zone’ of contagion where individuals have significant risks of exposure. The quarantine period also is justified by epidemiologic data placing the outer limit of asymptomatic transmission at 14 days,” they said.
But quarantines for anyone arriving from China “appear excessive,” they said.
“While there are mounting cases outside Hubei, most passengers from mainland China have not been exposed to infection, suggesting that quarantines are overinclusive,” Gostin and Hodge said. There are less drastic measures such as screening, monitoring and home quarantines that could work, they say.
“When rigorously implemented (including regular check-ins, health care worker visits, and social support), home quarantine orders are lawful, effective, and more respectful of individual rights to liberty and privacy than restrictive, off-site measures,” they write.
The CDC has the power to quarantine possible infected people but have to give them due process, they said, “including access to independent medical experts, legal counsel, and outside witnesses.”
“Although meaningful, these due process measures are constitutionally insufficient. The Supreme Court requires ‘clear and convincing’ evidence (not reasonable beliefs) for civil confinements, with the right to appeal to independent tribunals,” the professors said in the journal.
The article also argues that banning entry to non-U.S. nationals who have visited China “are overbroad because there is no individualized risk assessment.” These people could be given health screenings and monitoring instead of being banned from the United States outright.
“World Health Organization officially recommends against widespread travel restrictions under the International Health Regulations, including the US entry ban,” they said.
A separate article published Thursday in The Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal, argued that COVID-19 travel bans violated the WHO’s International Health Regulations.
Sixteen global health law scholars signed on to the opinion article in The Lancet. They said, “The intention of the IHR is that countries should not take needless measures that harm people or that disincentivise countries from reporting new risks to international public health authorities.”
“In imposing travel restrictions against China during the current outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), many countries are violating the IHR.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 8:03 AM with the headline "Is the CDC overreaching with its coronavirus quarantine? These experts think so."
