The Associated Press reports that President Bush signed an executive order yesterday authorizing the government to impose a quarantine to deal with any outbreak of the bird flu:
Bush’s order was described as a standby precaution, adding pandemic influenza to the government’s list of communicable diseases for which quarantines are authorized. It gives the government legal authority to detain or isolate a passenger arriving in the United States to prevent an infection from spreading.
The authority would be used only if the passenger posed a threat to public health and refused to cooperate with a voluntary request, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
The quarantine list was amended in 2003 to include severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which killed nearly 800 people in 2003. Other diseases on the list are cholera, diptheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever and viral hemorrhagic fevers.
Quarantine and isolation were last used during the SARS outbreak in 2003. The last large-scale quarantine was during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, although there have been lesser quarantines - for instance, travelers coming off airliners or cruise ships who had been exposed to curable diseases.
I'm glad this step has finally been taken. Like the Boy Scouts say - Be Prepared.
Thanks to California Yankee Reader Mike M. for the tip.
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