Pentagon Isolates Soldiers, Nurse Quarantined in N.J. to Go Home

This undated image provided by University of Texas at Arlington shows Kaci Hickox. In a Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014 telephone interview with CNN, Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is "inhumane." (AP Photo/University of Texas at Arlington) — This undated image provided by University of Texas at Arlington shows Kaci Hickox. In a Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014 telephone interview with CNN, Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is “inhumane.” (AP Photo/University of Texas at Arlington)

(Reuters)—The U.S. military was isolating personnel returning from their mission to help West African countries curb Ebola even though they showed no sign of infection and a nurse who treated patients was being allowed to go to her home state after New Jersey forced her into quarantine.

The decision by the Pentagon goes well beyond previously established military protocols and came just as the White House pushed to roll back steps by U.S. states to quarantine healthcare workers returning from the three countries at the center of the Ebola epidemic even if they were asymptomatic.

The U.S. Army has already isolated about a dozen soldiers at part of a U.S. military base in Vicenza, Italy, including Major General Darryl Williams, who oversaw the military’s initial response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

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