A physician who treated dying Ebola patients in Liberia flew in to JFK on Thursday night — and stayed at an airport hotel, a source told The Post.
Colin Bucks, a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University’s medical school, arrived on a Royal Moroccan Air flight, sources said.
He spent the night at the Hilton Garden Inn in Jamaica, Queens, where Centers for Disease Control workers also stay, according to a source.
On Friday, he was cleared to travel home to Northern California, where he will “be monitored by CDC there,” the source said.
“He is asymptomatic and he’s being allowed to leave the hotel and fly home,” a source added.
Sources said that Bucks, who works with International Medical Corps, was told to self-quarantine at the hotel, but he told The Post he merely missed a connecting flight. He said he was screened at the airport in Africa and again upon arrival at Kennedy airport.
“If there had been a flight yesterday, I would’ve not spent the night here,” he said in a telephone interview.
Bucks is strictly following the CDC’s recommendations and self-monitoring, he said. The CDC is also keeping track of his whereabouts, as standard protocol dictates, he added.
“I worked for over a month with no national staff or ex-patriot staff showing any signs of illness,” he said. “In general I’m amazed by the national staff I was working with. I really want them to be viewed as the heroes of Ebola response.
Bucks didn’t know Spencer, but said, “It sounds like this is someone who’s cut from the same cloth as me who followed all the rules and has not put other people at risk.”
He’s confident that by following proper guidelines, health care workers can do life-saving work abroad and stay safe.
“I have every confidence that [by] following CDC return recommendations, nurses, doctors, lab technicians can go to West Africa and do what’s necessary to protect the rest of the world and not come back and be the ones that need protection.”
On Friday afternoon, the governors of New York and New Jersey announced extra measures that will require all at-risk passengers touching down at JFK and Newark Liberty airports from Ebola-stricken countries to be quarantined for 21 days.