Quarantine

A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals and goods intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests, most often used to prevent the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease but do not yet have a confirmed diagnosis; it is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected are separated from the healthy population. Quarantine has been practiced around the world throughout history, with notable instances including the English village of Eyam during the 1665 bubonic plague outbreak, East Samoa during the 1918 flu pandemic, the 1925 diphtheria serum run to Nome, the 1972 Yugoslav smallpox outbreak, the 2002 to 2004 SARS outbreak, the 2013 to 2016 West African Ebola epidemic and the extensive quarantines applied worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Practice differs from country to country, as different countries vest authority to quarantine citizens and others under a variety of scenarios at different levels of government, with wide variation in enforcement mechanisms, and in some countries quarantine sits within a broader body of biosecurity legislation.