US Envoy Power Says Ebola Volunteers Are Heroes US Envoy Power Says Ebola Volunteers Are Heroes US Envoy Power Says Ebola Volunteers Are Heroes US envoy Samantha Power says health workers volunteering to fight Ebola should be treated like heroes, not like anything else The moment I shook the hand of Ebola nurse Kaci Hickox: MailOnline reporter's encounter with defiant quarantine nurse On Thursday morning I woke to find myself featured in a mini-media firestorm. Why? Because I had shaken the hand of a woman I had just interviewed. But this wasn't any woman – it was Kaci Hickox, 33, the nurse who is challenging her 21-day quarantine after returning from treating Ebola victims in Sierra Leone. Stories were written of our encounter with headlines such as: 'Nurse breaks quarantine, shakes reporter's hand'. It was newsworthy because she should not have contact with the public. I was one of a handful of reporters outside her home in Fort Kent, Maine, when she decided to come outside and talk about her 'appalling' confinement. Under Maine's official health guidelines she is not supposed to be in public until the three-week period is over. That is not until November 10. The guidelines are not mandatory but are voluntary. After she made it clear that she doesn't intend to stick to the rules - which are more stringent than those imposed by the CDC - Maine officials are preparing to secure a court order to force her to stay away from the public. Defiant Hickox is living with her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur - who has been out and about talking to friends. And on Thursday she went for a bike ride followed by a gaggle of reporters and cameramen. Despite a state trooper being stationed outside the house, no one tried to prevent people from getting close to her. Wednesday night's impromptu press conference was the first time I had been face-to-face with Hickox. Towards the end she bemoaned the fact that despite showing no symptoms of infection, she shouldn't hug or even shake her hand of people she meets. On the spur of the moment, I simply said: 'I'll shake your hand,' and I did. It felt like a common courtesy to someone I had just been asking questions of. It was a brief handshake, nothing memorable, something I have done thousands of times before. She had a firm grip. She looked me briefly in the eye and thanked me. I turned to leave her property as she and Wilbur went back inside. One local Maine journalist told me he had thought about doing the same but I got there first. Medical experts say the chances of Hickox falling ill from Ebola are now extremely remote and the risk of transmitting the virus while she is healthy are so slight as to be virtually non-existent – particularly to someone like me who touched her hand so briefly. President Obama on Wednesday tried to reassure the public that it is safe to touch healthcare workers returning from Ebola 'hot zones' when he did the same and shook the hands of doctors and nurses in the 21-day risk period at the White House. The one question I have been asked repeatedly since is: 'Did I wash my hands afterwards?'. Yes I did - partly because I was going out to dinner and I would have washed them anyway.

• published: 31 Oct 2014
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