Quarantine

Quarantine, a medical term (from Italian: quaranta giorni, forty days) is the act of keeping people or animals separated for a period of time before, for instance, allowing them to enter another country. By doing this, it is possible to limit the risk of spreading disease.

Related Topics:
Italian - Disease

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For example, due to the risk of introducing rabies from Continental Europe, the United Kingdom used to require all dogs (and, indeed, most animals) introduced to the country to spend six months in quarantine at an HM Customs and Excise pound; this policy was abolished at the beginning of the 21st Century in favour of a scheme generally known as Pet Passports, where animals can avoid quarantine if they have documentation showing they are up to date on their appropriate vaccinations.

Related Topics:
Rabies - Continental Europe - United Kingdom - HM Customs and Excise - 21st Century - Pet Passports - Vaccinations

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In the case of people, quarantine usually raises questions of civil rights, especially in cases of long confinement or segregation from society, such as that of Mary Mallon, a typhoid fever carrier. The first astronauts to visit the Moon were quarantined upon their return at a specially built Lunar Receiving Laboratory.

Related Topics:
Civil rights - Mary Mallon - Typhoid fever - Carrier - Astronaut - Moon - Lunar Receiving Laboratory

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Some quarantine periods can be very short, such as in the case of a suspected anthrax attack, in which persons are allowed to leave as soon as they shed their potentially contaminated garments and undergo a decontamination shower. For example, an article entitled "Daily News workers quarantined" describes a brief quarantine until people could be showered in a decontamination tent. (Kelly Nankervis, Daily News). The February/March 2003 issue of HazMat Magazine suggests that people be "locked in a room until proper decon could be performed", in the event of "suspect anthrax".

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Standard-Times senior correspondent Steve Urbon (2/14/03) describes such temporary quarantine powers:

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Civil rights activists in some cases have objected to people being rounded up, stripped and showered against their will. But Capt. Chmiel said local health authorities have "certain powers to quarantine people."

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Ian Craig ManchesterOnline article of Thursday, 20th May 2004 suggests that "the Commons chamber ... locked, with hundreds of MPs, journalists and members of the public inside, and they would have had to be stripped and been subject to decontamination" prior to being allowed to leave.

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The purpose of such quarantine-for-decontamination is to prevent the spread of contamination, and to contain the contamination such that others are not put at risk from a person fleeing a scene where contamination is suspect.

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Quarantine is also used as a general term for blockading (such as the naval blockade which happened in the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s) or for denying access systematically to a resource. In computer sciences, it is used to name the procedure of isolation of computer viruses into a special directory, until something can be done about it without danger of infecting other files in the disk.

Related Topics:
Blockading - Cuban missile crisis - Computer sciences - Computer virus

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For the science fiction novel by Greg Egan of the same name, see Quarantine (novel)

Related Topics:
Science fiction - Novel - Greg Egan - Quarantine (novel)

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