Quarantine and isolation are public health measures used for centuries to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Quarantine is separation of persons who have been exposed to an infection but asymptomatic, while isolation is separation of infected patients. Voluntary quarantine is preferred, but if necessary, it can be mandatory. These implementations can lead to restrictions on individual liberties, leading to ethical and legal problems. Isolation and quarantine enforcement are regulated by laws. Those who do not follow the quarantine rules could be punished. Isolation and quarantine practices in our country are described in General Hygiene Law. In this study the importance of quarantine, when and how it is applied, and its ethical and especially legal dimension are discussed.
Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are actions apart from getting vaccinated and medications, in order to promote deceleration of the spread of illness among people and communities during pandemic. In this article, we aim to examine NPIs applied in Turkey and worldwide due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the NPIs such as isolation, quarantine, and contact tracing were maintained with updates of the Ministry of Health guidelines in Turkey. Some NPIs including travel and partial or full curfew mobilization restrictions were set in accordance with the various periods by the number of cases. Periods of restrictions at autumn 2021 to summer 2022 are national partial curfews, national extended curfews, local decision-making phase, revised local decisionmaking phase, partial lockdown, full lockdown and gradual normalization. Mitigation and suppression have been implemented in Turkey with restrictions of varying severity throughout the course of the epidemic. It is seen that the restrictions implemented in Turkey contributed to the flattening of the epidemic curve.Even some countries mainly applied the suppression method, and others applied the mitigation method, in general it is seen that similar methods were applied with different weights. Examples of different countries demonstrated that NPIs are effective for flattening epidemic curve. NPI have been the main instrument for a year and a half from the beginning of the epidemic to mid-2021 in Turkey as well as worldwide.
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