New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he has no second thoughts about enacting a 21-day medical quarantine on medical workers returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. 
 
 "I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later," the Republican governor said on "Fox News Sunday," emphasizing the population density of his state and the New York metropolitan area. 
 
 "The fact of the matter is that the CDC protocol, as Dr. [Anthony] Fauci admitted himself, had been a moving target," Christie added, referring to an earlier interview on the same show with the director of the Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Fauci talks quarantine's 'unintended consequences') 
 
 "It was my conclusion that we needed to do this to protect the public health of the people of New Jersey," Christie said. "[New York] Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo agreed, and now [Chicago] Mayor [Rahm] Emanuel agrees, and I think the CDC eventually will come around to our point of view on this." 
 
 "This is government's job," Christie said. "We have taken this action, and I have no second thoughts about it." 
 
 (WATCH: Sunday shows in 90 seconds) 
 
 Asked to comment on the idea of a quarantine, Fauci reiterated the notion that it was unnecessary, calling it "draconian" during his appearance on "Meet the Press" on NBC." 
 
 We need to treat them, returning people, with respect, and make sure that they're really heroes," he said. "So the idea that we're being a little bit draconian, there are other ways to protect. There's monitoring, there's direct monitoring, there's active monitoring. We don't necessarily need to do that." 
 
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 Read more about: Quarantine, Chris Christie, Ebola, Anthony Fauci ||||| New guidelines concerning Ebola in the U.S. call for voluntary isolation and monitoring of travelers exposed to the virus. WSJ's Betsy McKay and Simon Constable discuss. Photo: Getty 
 
 The Obama administration laid out new guidelines Monday calling for voluntary isolation and monitoring of travelers exposed to Ebola, to counter a proliferation of divergent state rules over how to contain the outbreak. 
 
 That came as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration, which had imposed mandatory quarantines last week, said that a nurse held in a tent in a Newark hospital would be privately transported to her home in Maine. Kaci Hickox, who returned to the U.S. last week after working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone, had criticized her isolation over the weekend. 
 
 The new guidelines, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommend that people at high risk of developing Ebola voluntarily isolate themselves from others for 21 days. That is less stringent than recent guidelines from New York and New Jersey, which imposed mandatory quarantines on such people and stoked tensions with the White House. 
 
 Mr. Christie was unapologetic Monday. “I understand that she didn’t want to be there, she made that very clear from the beginning,” Mr. Christie told reporters. “But my obligation is to all of the people of New Jersey, and we’re just going to continue to do that.” 
 
 ENLARGE New York City health officials pass out fliers about Ebola on Monday. TK 
 
 CDC Director Tom Frieden said the guidelines released to state health departments call for those who have had direct exposure to the Ebola virus—such as through a needle stick or caring for an Ebola patient without wearing protective gear—to stay off public transportation and avoid “congregate settings” such as offices. 
 
 Those individuals would also be banned from flying and would undergo “direct active monitoring” by a public health worker who would check their temperatures twice daily and discuss possible symptoms, he said. 
 
 The CDC announcement came as the Obama administration sharpened its criticism of states that decided to forcibly quarantine medical workers returning from West Africa. Senior administration officials say mandatory quarantines could dissuade volunteers from going overseas to offer much-needed assistance in Ebola-stricken countries. 
 
 “If we do things that make it very difficult for people to come back, if we turn them into pariahs instead of recognizing the heroic work that they’re doing, a couple of things may happen that none of us want to happen,” Dr. Frieden said, adding that it could also encourage health workers to conceal that they have had contact with patients. 
 
 The White House acknowledged the limits of its power to enforce any CDC guidelines, noting that state and local officials ultimately will make their own decisions about how to protect their citizens. A number of states have issued their own rules, which vary in small ways from the federal guidelines. 
 
 “States are given significant authority for governing their constituents,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said on Monday. Mr. Earnest also suggested that Ms. Hickox, the nurse who described the conditions of her quarantine as “really inhumane,” wasn’t shown respect. “Her service and commitment to this cause is something that should be honored and respected,” Mr. Earnest said. “And I don’t think we do that by making her live in a tent for two or three days.” 
 
 Dr. Frieden said the CDC is discussing the guidelines with state and local health departments, who make the final decision on whether to adopt them. Health departments around the country do generally abide by CDC recommendations, but decisions about whether to quarantine are up to them. 
 
 The latest moves came as the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. said Monday that a 5-year-old boy who had been showing Ebola-like symptoms after recently returning from West Africa doesn’t have the disease. 
 
 A spokeswoman for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn’t respond to a request for comment about the CDC. Earlier on Monday, before the guidelines were released, he said the CDC sets a “minimum policy.” He added: “New York…is different than a lot of other places in the country, and I want to make sure that we have the appropriately safe policy, and that’s what this is.” 
 
 Some states that released guidelines on Monday said they were aligned with the CDC recommendations. 
 
 Minnesota outlined a plan to monitor for 21 days people traveling from West Africa, including twice-daily checks by health staff. No one being monitored can use public transportation for trips lasting longer than three hours. Travelers will also be required to keep a log of all activities and contacts during the 21 days. 
 
 Illinois, which on Oct. 24 said it would require a 21-day home quarantine only for high-risk individuals who had direct contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, clarified its guidance on Monday. The state Department of Public Health said high-risk individuals include those who fit into five specific scenarios, including travelers who had direct contact with the fluids of a patient without appropriate personal protective gear. 
 
 Virginia and Maryland said Monday they would actively monitor the health of all travelers from the three countries hard hit by Ebola, but both states stopped short of mandatory quarantines for all returning medical workers. 
 
 Maryland’s health secretary, Joshua Sharfstein, said the updated CDC guidance is “very consistent” with new state protocols unveiled earlier Monday by Gov. Martin O’Malley. “I think it’s a sensible approach,” Dr. Sharfstein said of the federal guidelines. “It will protect the public and respect health-care workers.” 
 
 Ebola is a highly contagious virus, but only if you come into contact with certain bodily fluids of those infected. What do scientists know about how it's transmitted? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer. 
 
 The CDC’s Dr. Frieden said health-care workers returning to the U.S. from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, as well as others considered to be at “some risk” of developing the disease, should also be “intensively monitored” daily by public-health authorities. That includes conversations about symptoms, “even something as vague as fatigue,” he said. That was an apparent reference to symptoms that New York City doctor Craig Spencer said he had for a day or two before he developed a fever and alerted health authorities to his condition last week. 
 
 In addition, any travel for health-care workers and others at some risk would need to be “coordinated and pre-approved” by public-health authorities, Dr. Frieden said. But they wouldn’t be asked or ordered to isolate themselves at home, he said. 
 
 Dr. Frieden cited a study in which the CDC found 16% of the 173 household members of 27 Ebola patients developed the disease. He said that of 78 people who shared meals and the same house with an Ebola patient, but didn’t care for them, none got sick. “That doesn’t mean there is zero risk,” he said. “It does mean Ebola spreads primarily through contact with bodily fluids.” 
 
 Currently, fewer than 100 people enter the U.S. daily from Ebola-hit countries, Dr. Frieden said. Most are either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, he said. About 70% come to six states, he said. New York is the most common destination, and Maryland is second. The other four states are New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Georgia. 
 
 Of 807 passengers from those countries who were screened at U.S. airports between Oct. 11 and Oct. 25, 46, or 5.7%, were health-care workers, he said. 
 
 Even with the CDC’s guidance, states can follow their own policies except in specific situations, such as when the president declares a national emergency or the Department of Health and Human Services issues a public-health emergency. That occurred in 2009 over the H1N1 flu virus. 
 
 “States still retain their power to disagree,” said James Hodge Jr., associate dean and professor at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. “On a routine day-to-day basis, the CDC and state and local work hand in hand. When you push buttons in emergency scenarios, things can get a little stressed.” 
 
 —Josh Dawsey contributed to this article. 
 
 Write to Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@wsj.com, Colleen McCain Nelson at colleen.nelson@wsj.com and Stephanie Armour at stephanie.armour@wsj.com ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — Mandatory 21-day quarantines on health care workers returning from Ebola-ravaged West Africa, like those put in place by three states, can have the unintended consequence of discouraging them from volunteering, a top federal health official said Sunday. 
 
 Patient Nina Pham is hugged by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, outside of National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Friday, Oct. 24,... (Associated Press) 
 
 File-This Feb. 28, 2014, file photo shows Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., speaking during a news conference after a private U.N. Security Council meeting. Power is going to visit all three... (Associated Press) 
 
 Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that as a physician and scientist, he would have recommended against a quarantine. 
 
 "The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go." he said. 
 
 He said active and direct monitoring can accomplish the same thing as a quarantine because people infected with Ebola do not become contagious until they start showing symptoms. Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. 
 
 New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed mandatory quarantines after Dr. Craig Spencer, a Doctors Without Borders physician who treated patients in Guinea, was diagnosed with Ebola last Thursday. The doctor, who is now in isolation at New York's Bellevue Hospital, had been on the subway, went bowling and to a park and restaurant before showing symptoms 
 
 Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., said he concluded the quarantine was necessary to protect public health in his state and that he thinks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "eventually will come around to our point of view on this." 
 
 Christie said Fauci was counting on "a voluntary system with folks who may or may not comply." 
 
 The governor pointed to an NBC News crew that had returned from West Africa was supposed to self-quarantine because its cameraman was hospitalized with Ebola. "Two days later they were out picking up takeout food in Princeton and walking around the streets of Princeton," he said. The cameraman has recovered and has been released from the hospital. 
 
 Fauci said Spencer did exactly what he should have done by putting himself in isolation as soon as he developed a fever. "No one came into contact with his body fluids," Fauci said. "The risk is essentially zero, vanishingly small." 
 
 Fauci said the health care workers returning from treating Ebola patients are responsible and know that if they have symptoms there's the possibility of transmitting the disease. "They don't want to get anyone else infected," he said. 
 
 As for the unintended consequences, he said, "If we don't have our people volunteering to go over there, then you're going to have other countries that are not going to do it and then the epidemic will continue to roar," he said. 
 
 Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is on a trip to West Africa to highlight the need for increased international support to combat Ebola, spoke of a need to ensure that returning U.S. health care workers "are treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done." 
 
 Fauci appeared on "Fox News Sunday," ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press." Christie was interviewed on Fox and Power spoke to NBC. ||||| Rep. Darrell Issa said on Sunday the public lacks confidence in the Obama administration's ability to handle the Ebola crisis. 
 
 The California Republican, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said governors of both parties are reacting to an absence of presidential leadership. Illinois, New Jersey and New York recently imposed mandatory 21-day quarantines for health care professionals returning from treating Ebola patients in West Africa. 
 
 But Issa said on CNN's "State of the Union" that mandatory quarantines might not be the best way for states to contain the disease. 
 
 (WATCH: Sunday shows in 90 seconds) 
 
 "Science has told us, if we are to take them at their word, that if someone doesn’t have an elevated temperature or the other later symptoms, that we can rely on them not being contagious," he said. "If that’s true, then immediate isolation of people for 21 days is not the answer. Again, trust matters." 
 
 Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier Sunday that imposing mandatory quarantines might discourage health care professionals from going to West Africa in the first place, where they're most needed to stop the spread of the disease at its source. 
 
 The administration needs to step up and lead, Issa said. But, he said, President Barack Obama's appointment of Ron Klain, a lawyer, to coordinate government response efforts doesn't inspire much confidence. 
 
 "The fact is, I’d much rather he find a four-star general or admiral to coordinate these people who have said things that didn’t turn out to be accurate, who have made mistakes and don’t want to admit them," Issa said. 
 
 Read more about: President Barack Obama, Obama Administration, Darrell Issa, Ron Klain, Ebola, Anthony Fauci
– Chris Christie may have a pretty irate nurse taking the Garden State to task over the execution of his mandatory-quarantine policy toward Ebola, but he's standing by it. "I think this is a policy that will become a national policy sooner rather than later," he told Fox News Sunday today, as per Politico. "It was my conclusion that we needed to do this to protect the public health of the people of New Jersey. We have taken this action, and I have no second thoughts about it." Fellow Republican Darrell Issa, meanwhile, says that New Jersey's quarantine—like those in Illinois and New York—is an attempt to compensate for the White House's lack of leadership on Ebola, but probably not the best course. "Science has told us that if someone doesn’t have an elevated temperature or the other later symptoms, that we can rely on them not being contagious," he said. "If that’s true, then immediate isolation of people for 21 days is not the answer. Again, trust matters." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci: "Asymptomatic (people) do not transmit. That doesn't mean we're cavalier about it, but that means there are other steps (to avoid the) unintended consequences of disincentivizing health care workers." Per the AP: "The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power: Returning American health care workers need to be "treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done."