Quarantine and its history

A Sthe global battle against the coronavirus continues, one of the main strategies is the centuriesold practice of quarantine.

It’s becoming the focus?

In locations where the virus is spreading fast, quarantine is being adopted or measures in place already are being extended.

Italy?

For the last week, around 50,000 people in northern Italy were under quarantine, but at least 16 million people – a quarter of the population – are now on lockdown. The number of people to have died from the coronavirus in Italy shot up by 133 yesterday to 366.

New measures include?

The suspension of weddings and funerals and the closures of pools, resorts, museums and gyms. Residents of Lombardy and 14 other central and northern provinces will need special permission to travel.

Quarantine began during the plague?

During the 14th century plague epidemic – where the disease was spread by rats, cargo and sailors arriving in Sicily from the eastern Mediterranean and went on to ravage across Europe – organised institutional responses to disease control began. Strangers were prevented from entering cities and cordons were put in place, while makeshift camps were set up to create a separation between healthy and infected people.

“Quaranta?”

The Italian for 40 gave its name to the separation, which was usually for 40 days, keeping people, animals and cargo or goods that may have been exposed to disease away from healthy people.

The Great Plague of London? The Great Plague of 1660s, introduced quarantine measures. Any house where someone had died from the disease would be locked up and no-one allowed to enter or leave for 40 days. Plague houses were marked with a red cross on the door.

It eventually began to be viewed as archaic?

By the early 1900s, the world felt it was on top of dealing with such situations and even the Encyclopedia Britannica said that the “old sanitary preventive system of detention of ships and men” was “a thing of the past”.

But then came the Spanish Flu? The 1918 outbreak was virulent. Disease containment efforts were said to have been put in place too late and insufficiently rigidly at a time when troop movements were aiding the spread of the flu that claimed around 50 million lives.

Sars?

During the 2003 Sars (Severe

Acute Respiratory Syndrome) pandemic – which began in China – Eugenia Tognotti, a professor of the history of medicine and human sciences at Italy’s University of Sassari, said it marked a “new chapter in the history of quarantine…as traditional intervention measures were resurrected”.

So quarantine is still key?

Ms Tognotti said: “In a globalised world that is becoming ever more vulnerable to communicable diseases, a historical perspective can help clarify the use and implications of a still-valid public health strategy.”