NBC Medical Correspondent Nancy Snyderman issued an apology Monday night for violating a 21-day quarantine she agreed to after returning from reporting in West Africa.
Anchorman Brian Williams read Snyderman's statement on the NBC Nightly News, in which she apologizes, saying "members of our group" had violated the voluntary guidelines to which they had agreed.
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The full statement reads:
While under voluntary quarantine guidelines, which called for our team to avoid public contact for 21 days, members of our group violated those guidelines and understand that our quarantine is now mandatory until 21 days have passed.
We remain healthy and our temperatures are normal.
As a health professional I know that we have no symptoms and pose no risk to the public, but I am deeply sorry for the concerns this episode caused.
We are thrilled that [NBC Cameraman] Ashoka [Mukpo] is getting better and our thoughts continue to be with the thousands affected by Ebola whose stories we all went to cover.
While Snyderman didn't reference a particular violation, the blog Planet Princeton reported on Oct. 9 that Snyderman sat in her car outside the Peasant Grill in Hopewell, N.J., while someone in her car got out to pick up an order from the restaurant.
Snyderman, a resident of Princeton, N.J., had just returned that week from West Africa, where she and her team worked with Ashoka Mukpo, who is being treated in a Nebraska hospital for Ebola.
On Monday, Mukpo tweeted that he was feeling much better:
Back on twitter, feeling like I'm on the road to good health. Will be posting some thoughts this week. Endless gratitude for the good vibes.
— ashoka (@unkyoka) October 13, 2014
Now that I've had first hand exp with this scourge of a disease, I'm even more pained at how little care sick west Africans are receiving
— ashoka (@unkyoka) October 13, 2014
Though Snyderman and the rest of the NBC crew had agreed to the voluntary quarantine, the New Jersey Health Department made that agreement mandatory after news of the violation broke.