CDC Quarantine First Since ’63
The federal government has quarantined a man who flew on two trans-Atlantic flights with a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.
The quarantine order by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to be imposed by the federal government since 1963, according to the Washington Post. States sometimes detain patients with infections.
Arizona health officials got a court order last year to confine a man who was infected with the more virulent form of TB to a hospital ward in a Phoenix jail. He had flown to the United States from Russia.
In the latest case, CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding says the man boarded the flights even though he was advised not to travel. Yet “from our perspective no laws were broken here,” Gerberding said.
Quarantines could become more widespread if the avian flu arrives in the United States, according to “The Avian Flu Time Bomb” in the November 2005 ABA Journal.
