Home quarantine for travelers buys time as new virus spreads
On his return from China last week, Dr. Ian Lipkin quarantined himself in his basement. His wife now puts his food on the stairs. He’s run out of things to watch on Netflix. At odd hours, he walks in New York’s Central Park, keeping 10 feet away from others.
Lipkin is among hundreds of people in the U.S. and thousands around the world who, although not sick, live in semi-voluntary quarantine at home. With attention focused on quarantined cruise ships and evacuees housed on U.S. military bases, those in their own homes have largely escaped notice.
They, too, experts say, play a crucial role in slowing the spread of the new viral disease now called COVID-19.
Most cases and nearly all deaths have been in mainland China. Around the world, authorities are urging two weeks of home quarantine and symptom monitoring for travelers returning from there.
It’s the only tool they have.
“We don’t yet have a vaccine and we don’t have approved drugs for prevention of disease or treatment of disease. So all we have is isolation,” said Lipkin, who directs Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity.
An expert virus hunter, Lipkin was invited by Chinese health authorities to help assess the risk posed by COVID-19. He did similar work in China during the SARS outbreak in 2003.
“This is my second time in the slammer,” said Lipkin, who spent time in quarantine then. He will end his confinement Tuesday, celebrating with a dry martini in public.
The numbers in home quarantine are constantly changing and hard to pin down. New York state, for instance, has received the names of more than 350 who recently returned from mainland China. Local health departments are monitoring them, recommending quarantine for those without known exposure to the virus.
State and U.S. guidelines sort people into high-, mediumand low-risk groups and have advice for each group, but local health departments have discretion in how to carry out the quarantines.
Breaking a quarantine order is a misdemeanor in most states. Violating a federal quarantine order can mean fines and imprisonment.
In New York, Lipkin finds in the COVID-19 outbreak echoes of the movie “Contagion,” for which he was chief science adviser. He has heard the movie has gained new popularity, and he hopes people are learning from it, washing their hands and listening to public health authorities.
He takes his temperature twice a day and reports by email to the medical officer at Columbia, which directed him into home confinement. Unlike others in his situation, he was able to send a swab sample from the back of his nose and throat to his own lab to test for the virus. The result was negative. No virus.
He uses an exercise bike, but most of the time, he works.
“There’s more work than I can possibly do because not only am I running the laboratory at Columbia and writing and dealing with media, but I’m also running programs in China,” he said. “I’m not getting a lot of sleep.”
Lipkin and his wife, Katherine Lewis, are keeping their sense of humor. “My wife is terrific,” he said. “She’ll make dinner for me and leave it on the stairs and say, ‘I’m putting it down here so I don’t have to get your cooties.’
“I hadn’t heard the term ‘cooties’ in probably 50 years.”
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