The Rutland man under quarantine for possible exposure to the Ebola virus has been identified as Peter Italia.
WCAX spoke Wednesday with Italia, who is being held at an undisclosed location to ensure he does not have the Ebola virus. Vermont officials have said he poses no threat to public health.
On his Facebook page, Italia wrote at length about his four-week trip to West Africa, and confirmed that law enforcement and health officials met him as he arrived at New York’s JFK International Airport. He was brought back to Vermont by a police officer and a health department worker.
“I have since been forced into ‘voluntary’ quarantine for 21 days. I am also under 24-hour guard,” he wrote. “Otherwise, I have been treated quite well.”
Italia is the author of a book titled “Quantum Medicine,” described as containing “true stories about real hospital cases in which Dr. Italia has used time travel and other methods.” His biography, posted on the ebook publishing website Smashwords, says he attended Champlain College and graduated from the Universidad Eugenio María de Hostos school of medicine in the Dominican Republic.
Italia is not a medical professional in Vermont, according to state officials.
In a Facebook post on Oct. 1, Italia announced that he had arrived in the Guinean capital of Conakry to “join the fight” against the Ebola virus.
“Because I do not have a medical license, those international organizations helping here in West Africa such as #DoctorsWithoutBorders and #SamaritansPurse would not accept me,” he wrote in the Oct. 1 post.
He wrote that, in addition to his desire to help stop the spread of Ebola, he left the U.S. out of necessity because he could not find work in the medical field.
Several posts start with a plea for employment, “First of all, I cannot find work in the US. If there is a hospital anywhere that wants to hire me, please let me know ASAP.” He signs the posts Dr. Peter Italia MD.
The New York Times reported Sunday about a situation that presented an “unusual challenge” for federal law enforcement officials where multiple agencies, “urgently investigated a man who wrote a bizarre post on social media that he was going to try and contract Ebola in Africa and then return to the United States.” That man appears to be Italia.
The Times also reported that the man wrote a Facebook post that “indicated that he was mentally unstable, mentioning a time machine at one point.”
VTDigger could not find any posts from Italia that make such a claim, but other aspects of the Times report closely mirror Italia’s version of events on Facebook and details offered up by state officials. The posts referred to by the Times may have been removed. Other aspects of the Times story, such as a reference that the man may have gone to West Africa to contract the disease, could not be confirmed.
The Times reported that, according to senior U.S. officials, the man wanted to work alongside aid organizations, but was rejected for lack of medical expertise. That is the same story that Italia self-attests in Facebook posts, and described by Shumlin at Tuesday’s news conference.
Asked directly Tuesday if Italia, who was not identified at that time, was the man in the Times report, Shumlin said he had not read it. Asked if he was aware of the man in quarantine having a history of mental illness, Shumlin said he was not.
But Shumlin’s spokeswoman, Susan Allen, confirmed Wednesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had contact with Italia before his return to the U.S., which Italia again affirms in posts online.
The Times report notes that, “C.D.C. officials interviewed the man and took his temperature several times, and determined that he showed no signs of the virus.”
Contact with authorities
The CDC, according to the Times, had no legal authority to hold Italia, and he was allowed to return. The Times report, published Sunday, said state officials expected him back in the U.S. in the next several days. He arrived at JFK on Monday.
Italia reported making two trips from Conakry into rural Guinea — where, he said, “life goes on as usual” — and along its southern border with Sierra Leone. During the second of those excursions he said he illegally crossed the border into Sierra Leone, which he claims is highly porous. He claims to have paid a border guard 200,000 Guinean Francs to stamp his passport, which is roughly $29 U.S.
He wrote that there is a deep mistrust of the Guinean government and Western influence among the people he spoke with, but they often asked him for medical supplies.
Italia sent firsthand accounts of his experiences to major international news outlets, but he said they disregarded his dispatches.
In the social media posts Italia becomes frustrated by the way in which media and the medical establishment ignore him. That exasperation is coupled with a seemingly genuine desire to help Ebola stricken West Africa.
“Nobody gives a damn about me or all my accumulated knowledge and skills from many years of hard work. Nor the fact that I am a good doctor. What in the hell is wrong with people?” he writes, but then adds “And still despite everything I am also here because of a deep desire to help people.”
The current Ebola outbreak has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa, by official counts and — as Italia points out in many of his posts — has a 50 percent mortality rate in those infected.
Italia repeatedly expressed concern that the virus will spread exponentially and hundreds of thousands of people will die.
Voluntary quarantine
The Vermont health commissioner has the authority to hold people in quarantine involuntarily should it be deemed necessary for public safety and health. Gov. Peter Shumlin said Tuesday that the state had not invoked that authority, but would do so if necessary.
State officials have said Italia will be held for a 21-day period in order to determine he is free of the Ebola virus. Health Department workers are taking his temperature twice a day, and watching for flu-like symptoms. If Italia has an elevated temperature or begins displaying symptoms, he will be immediately taken to a medical facility prepared to handle Ebola patients, officials have said.
Ebola cannot be spread by someone who is asymptomatic. Shumlin and state health officials have said that Italia poses no risk to the public and the likelihood that he has contracted Ebola is “extremely low.”
For more on the state’s Ebola preparedness click here.
