Quarantine
A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease, but do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis. It is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population. Quarantine considerations are often one aspect of border control.
The concept of quarantine has been known since biblical times and is known to have been practiced through history in various places. Notable quarantines in modern history include that of the village of Eyam in 1665 during the bubonic plague outbreak in England; East Samoa during the 1918 flu pandemic; the 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak, and extensive quarantines applied throughout the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ethical and practical considerations need to be considered when applying quarantine to people. Practice differs from country to country. In some countries, quarantine is just one of many measures governed by legislation relating to the broader concept of biosecurity; for example, Australian biosecurity is governed by the single overarching Biosecurity Act 2015.
Etymology and terminology
The word quarantine comes from "quarantena", meaning "forty days", used in 14th–15th-century Venetian and designating the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic; it followed the "trentino", or thirty-day isolation period, first imposed in 1347 in the Republic of Ragusa, Dalmatia (modern Dubrovnik in Croatia).
"Merriam-Webster" gives various meanings to the noun form, including "a period of 40 days", several relating to ships, "a state of enforced isolation", and as "a restriction on the movement of people and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests". The word is also used as a verb.
Quarantine is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population.
Quarantine may be used interchangeably with "cordon sanitaire", and although the terms are related, cordon sanitaire refers to the restriction of movement of people into or out of a defined geographic area, such as a community, in order to prevent an infection from spreading.
See also Flags and/or Signal flag "Lima"
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