Quarantine Methods and Secondary Outbreak Prevention | CDC EID

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Volume 16, Number 8–August 2010
Dispatch
Quarantine Methods and Prevention of Secondary Outbreak of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009
Chen-Yi Chu,1 Cheng-Yi Li,1 Hui Zhang,1 Yong Wang, Dong-Hui Huo, Liang Wen, Zhi-Tao Yin, Feng Li, and Hong-Bin Song
People's Liberation Army Institute of Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, People's Republic of China

Suggested citation for this article

Abstract
During the 2009 influenza (H1N1) pandemic, some countries used quarantine for containment or mitigation. Of 152 quarantined university students we studied, risk for illness was higher for students quarantined in a room with a person with a confirmed case; we found no difference between students quarantined in double or single rooms.
Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza emerged in Mexico in March 2009 and by June 10 had rapidly spread to 74 countries (1,2). Nonpharmaceutical interventions for pandemic influenza at the community level were recommended by the World Health Organization before and during the pandemic (3,4). One such nonpharmaceutical intervention was quarantine of contacts of persons with confirmed cases. A key question in closed settings (e.g., military barracks) was how to prevent a secondary outbreak of influenza among those quarantined.

The first identified case of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in mainland People's Republic of China was imported from the United States and reported on May 11, 2009 (5). On May 29, the Chinese Ministry of Health required that each confirmed case-patient and each contact be isolated and quarantined in 1 separate room to contain transmission of the virus (6). Containment efforts appeared to successfully prevent community spread until mid-August (7). The Chinese Ministry of Health adjusted the quarantine guidelines on August 20 and permitted incomplete quarantine of contacts (e.g., quarantining >1 contact in 1 room) (8). We conducted an observational study of a pandemic (H1N1) 2009 outbreak among students of a university in northern China in September 2009. Our goal was to compare the effectiveness of different quarantine methods for preventing a secondary outbreak among the persons in quarantine.

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Suggested Citation for this Article
Chu C-Y, Li C-Y, Zhang H, Wang Y, Huo D-H, Wen L, et al. Quarantine methods and prevention of secondary outbreak of pandemic (H1N1) 2009. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2009 Aug [date cited]. http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/16/8/1300.htm

DOI: 10.3201/eid1608.091787

1These authors contributed equally to this article.