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05 March 2020 / David Lawson
Issue: 7877 / Categories: Features , Public , Covid-19
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Coronavirus quarantine

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The government has published its Coronavirus action plan but said little about the wider possibilities & implications, such as ‘area quarantine‘, says David Lawson

On 20 October 1831 the Privy Council met to consider the response to the cholera epidemic in Europe and ordered that regulations be published in the London Gazette ‘as the disease approaches the neighbouring shores’. In every town ‘one or more houses’ was to be prepared to receive the sick because ‘the most effectual means of preventing the spreading of any pestilence has always been found to be the immediate separation of the sick from the healthy’.

The origin of the term ‘quarantine’ is much older, probably relating to some fourteenth century Italian city states initially having a 30-day isolation period for ships from plague areas (a trentino) and then increasing this to 40 days (a quarantino).

We have seen two recent applications of quarantine, the reportedly robust system implemented in China in response to this coronavirus outbreak and the attempt to

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