New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Monday morning that the release of a quarantined nurse by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't indicate that his state-level Ebola-containment policies had shifted at all.

'I didn’t reverse any decision,' he told reporters outside a campaign event for Florida Gov. Rick Scott. 'If she was continuing to be ill she would have to stay. She hadn’t had any symptoms for 24 hours and she tested negative for Ebola so there’s no reason to keep her.'

A Christie spokesperson told MailOnline that nurse Kaci Hickox 'was never going to be quarantined for 21 days in the hospital.'

State policy, she said, called for Hickox to be quarantined until she no longer had medical symptoms for at least 24 hours, after she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport from west Africa.

New Jersey residents, the spokesperson explained, can be quarantined in their homes. But since Hickox is from Maine, her isolation had to be carried out at University Hospital, which was prepared to accept patients like her.

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The governors of New York and New Jersey announced last week mandatory quarantine for people returning to the United States through airports in their states who are deemed 'high risk.' New Jersey, led by Chris Christie, pictured, let one quarantined nurse go home on Monday but insisted that the rules were followed

In a telephone interview with CNN, Kaci Hickox, the nurse quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa, said the process of keeping her isolated is 'inhumane'

And the CDC, not New Jersey authorities, were ultimately in control of her quarantine. 'The CDC was aware of this woman being in the hospital,' the spokesperson said. 'They ordered the Ebola test. And they determined when she was symptom-free.'

CDC Director Thomas Frieden acknowledged during a conference call with journalists on Monday that New Jersey and other states are free to go beyond his agency's guidelines when dealing with suspected Ebola patients.

'If they wish to be more stringent than what CDC recommends, that's within their authority.'

The Obama administration pushed back on Sunday, however, following the latest all-hands Ebola meeting in the White House.

'We have let the governors of New York, New Jersey, and others states know that we have concerns with the unintended consequences of policies not grounded in science may have on efforts to combat Ebola at its source in West Africa,' a senior administration official said in a statement after that gathering.

Frieden also cautioned that health care workers might be discouraged from being honest about their travels, or even become reluctant to volunteer their time overseas, 'if we turn them into pariahs instead of recognizing the heroic work they are doing.'

Hickox gave several angry interviews with news outlets, and threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit over New Jersey officials' refusal to let her return home.

Ultimately, the state paid for her private transportation home to Maine, where public health officials will take over her monitoring.

Hickox, Christie said in Florida, is 'a good person and went over and was doing good work over in West Africa. But she needs to understand that the obligation of elected officials is to protect the public health of all the people.'

'And if that inconvenienced her for a period of time, that’s what we need to do to protect the public. That’s what we will continue to do.'

Reports swirled in New Jersey and Washington on Sunday night and Monday morning, suggesting that Christie had backpedaled on his policy, following a similar 180-degree shift from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Christie denied that either governor had shifted his policy.

'Governor Cuomo did not ease any restrictions at all,' Christie said. 'The same policies that we put into effect on Friday are still the same policies now. That’s been reported incorrectly.'

Other states, Christie said, have adopted the same policy of home-quarantining in-state residents and hospital quarantining others.

'Illinois has since adopted this policy, so has now the state of Maryland.' he said. 'So I’m telling you guys this is going to become a national policy eventually. Eventually the CDC will come around.'

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, says mandatory 21-day quarantines are 'a little bit draconian'

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (center) says he doesn't know how his 'mandatory' quarantine would be enforced

Christie is a likely entrant into the 2016 Republican Party presidential primary, and intergovernmental Ebola skirmishes will provide both major political parties with new ammunition as he crosses swords with the CDC.

New Jersey, New York and Illinois have three of the five airports where passengers who have spent time in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea are allowed to enter the United States.

The New York Times first reported that aides to Obama were lobbying Christie and Cuomo to relax their new rules.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday on the CBS program 'Face the Nation' that state-level quarantines send a message to health care professionals that volunteering in the Ebola hot zone will present new levels of inconvenience when they return.

At his daily briefing with reporters on Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stressed the administration's position that Ebola policies should 'not serve as a disincentive to doctors and nurses from this country volunteering in West Africa to treat Ebola patients.'

Such selfless behavior 'reflects a generosity of spirit and common humanity that is worthy of praise,' Earnest said.

'They are putting themselves at risk,' he said, to try to meet the needs of other people. That is an 'incredible show of charity,' he noted. 'Their commitment to their common man and to their country is one that should be respected.'

He also confirmed that the CDC will issue guidelines later today for returning healthcare workers. But those guidelines will be just that – guidelines. States and localities will still be able to issue their own rules, he said.

There had been sharp criticism of the guidelines after Hickox was forcibly quarantined in a New Jersey hospital isolation unit, even though she had displayed no symptoms other than a fever and had tested negative for Ebola.

Nurse Kaci Hickox was the first medical professional to be quarantined in New Jersey immediately upon returning to the United States from West Africa, where she had worked in treating Ebola patients. She lashed out at Christie for giving her a diagnosis of sorts as 'obviously ill'

President Barack Obama gives a hug to Dallas nurse Nina Pham in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday, the day she was declared free of the virus

Under the new guidelines in New York, medical professionals who have had contact with Ebola patients can now be quarantined at home and receive twice-daily monitoring if they have no symptoms.

Family members will be allowed to stay, and friends may also visit with the approval of health officials.

Senior administration officials had called the initial decision on Friday by the governors to impose such rules 'uncoordinated and hurried.'

Meanwhile, Hickox, the first nurse forcibly quarantined in New Jersey under the state's new policy, said her isolation at a hospital was 'inhumane,' adding: 'We have to be very careful about letting politicians make health decisions.'

Hickox ishired Norman Siegel, a high profile civil rights attorney, to challenge the order.

Christie on Sunday defended quarantining as necessary to protect the public and predicted it 'will become a national policy sooner rather than later.'

'The government's job is to protect safety and health of our citizens,' Christie said on Fox News Sunday. 'I have no second thoughts about it.'

Previously, Christie had characterized Hickox as 'obviously ill.'

'I'm sorry, but that's just a completely unacceptable statement in my opinion,' Hickox said Sunday during a phone interview with CNN. 'For him – a politician who's trusted and respected – to make a statement that's categorically not true is just unacceptable and appalling.'

Christie fired back on Monday, saying that 'she was ill.'

'She was obviously ill enough that the CDC and medical officials hospitalized her and gave her an Ebola test ... They don’t do that just for fun. That’s a very specific, difficult, expensive test to do.'

Cuomo also came under scrutiny over the weekend for criticizing Craig Spencer, a doctor who tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, for not obeying a 21-day voluntary quarantine. However, on Sunday, he called the health care workers 'heroes' and said his administration would encourage more medical workers to volunteer to fight Ebola.

Under the revised protocols Cuomo detailed on Sunday night, the state also will pay for any lost compensation if the quarantined workers are not paid by a volunteer organization.

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). Pham, the first nurse diagnosed with Ebola after treating an infected man at a Dallas hospital is free of the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci (left), director of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the mandatory, 21-day quarantining of medical workers returning from West Africa is unnecessary and could discourage volunteers from traveling to the danger zone

'My personal practice is to err on the side of caution,' Cuomo said. 'The old expression is, 'Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.''

'We're staying one step ahead,' Cuomo said. 'We're doing everything possible. Some people say we're being too cautious. I'll take that criticism.'

For much of the weekend, the governors had been under fire from members of the medical community and the White House in what they saw as an overreaction.

Earnest said Monday that he had not talked to the president about Hickox's release, so he could not say if the president felt she was being treated inhumanely. Still he said her release shows that communication between the federal government, the CDC and individual states and local officials continues to be successful.

The Obama aide would not tell reporters if the White House was informed by New Jersey or New York about their decision to instate a mandatory quarantine for health workers before it was put in place. He said the White House had been in 'close touch' with New Jersey and New York state officials, however, about the Ebola response.

'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,' said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci made the rounds on five major Sunday morning talk shows to argue that policy should be driven by science — and that science says people with the virus are not contagious until symptoms appear. And even then, infection requires direct contact with bodily fluids.

He said that close monitoring of medical workers for symptoms is sufficient, and warned that forcibly separating them from others, or quarantining them, for three weeks could cripple the fight against the outbreak in West Africa — an argument that humanitarian medical organizations have also made.

'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,' Fauci said.

Fauci said that close monitoring of medical workers for symptoms is sufficient, and warned that forcibly separating them from others, or quarantining them, for three weeks could cripple the fight against the outbreak in West Africa, an argument that humanitarian medical organizations have also made

Commuters ride inside an L train subway car. This is the same train line that Dr. Craig Spencer, a Doctors Without Borders physician who tested positive for the Ebola, had taken to visit a bowling alley in Brooklyn

The New York-area quarantine measures were announced after Spencer returned to New York City from treating Ebola victims in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital Center Thursday to be treated for Ebola. In the week after his return, he rode the subway, went bowling and ate at a restaurant.

Hospital officials said Sunday that Spencer was in serious but stable condition, was looking better than he did the day before, and tolerated a plasma treatment well.

Hickox, the quarantined nurse who just returned from Sierra Leone, said she had no symptoms at all and tested negative for Ebola in a preliminary evaluation.

'It's just a slippery slope, not a sound public health decision,' she said of the quarantine policy. 'I want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and don't feel I've been treated that way.'

Hickox has access to a computer, her cellphone, magazines and newspapers and has been allowed to have takeout food, New Jersey Health Department officials said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called Hickox a 'returning hero' and charged that she was 'treated with disrespect,' as if she done something wrong, when she was put into quarantine. He said that she was interrogated repeatedly and things were not explained well to her.

Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is on a trip to West Africa, said returning U.S. health care workers should be 'treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done.'

In other developments, President Barack Obama met Sunday with his Ebola response team, including 'Ebola czar' Ron Klain and other public health and national security officials.

According to a statement released by the White House after the meeting, Obama said any measures concerning returning health care workers 'should be crafted so as not to unnecessarily discourage those workers from serving.'

Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered twice-daily monitoring for 21 days of anyone returning from the Ebola-stricken areas.

The World Health Organization said more than 10,000 people have been infected with Ebola in the outbreak that came to light last March, and nearly half of them have died, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

New York City Council District 7 Community Liason Fidel Malena hands out flyers about Ebola risk near the apartment building of Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer in Harlem