Last Updated on July 17, 2020 by Sagar Aryal

This century alone, the world has faced localized and disseminated epidemics and pandemics, that have redefined science and the aspects of prevention and control of very infectious and contagious diseases. These characteristic diseases have a high infectivity rate and they spread rapidly, enhanced by human-human contact.

Most of these infections are caused by viruses, some that are common and some are emerging and reemerging. For example, the Influenza virus is and has been the most common virus causing global epidemics and pandemics, and in the past 25 years alone we have faced epidemics of Influenza Virus, Ebola Virus, and Coronavirus.

These are viruses that are transmitted from animals to humans and somehow they have ‘evolved’ and they can be transmitted from person-to-person. In addition to their transmission factors, they are very contagious, to a point that the World Health Organisation (WHO) put measures of Isolation and Quarantine to curb spread and control infectivity rates. They are otherwise public health measures to stop or prevent or reduce the spread of a contagious disease.

And lately, since the occurrence of COVID-19, an infection caused by a beta coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the WHO, the disease has infected 1.5 million people and caused mortality of about 90,000 individuals globally.

Travel restrictions have been effected, countries have put lockdown measures on their towns and countries generally and have implemented social distancing, Isolation and quarantine measures as well as are preventive and control mechanisms of reducing the spread and infection transmissions. It is these factors that we have to define and understand Isolation and Quarantine, what their implementation has and will do in controlling these types of viral infection.