Aaliyah Khan, a researcher at a military research organization, arrived at New Delhi’s international airport on Saturday afternoon and was shuffled around by health and immigration authorities for more than 30 hours before being admitted to a government quarantine center 50 miles away.
The above paragraph is an excerpt from a New York Times article, published on March 24, 2020. Covid had begun its rampage, and with it came the word quarantine. Within a matter of days, this 10-letter word had found its place in the colloquial tongue, entirely disregarding existing linguistic barriers. It is synonymous with the disease.
Interestingly, though “Quarantine,” in its most basic sense, is often believed to be a period of mere mandatory isolation, its origin is rooted in disease and death. Some sources say, even the Bible.
In the mid-14th Century, Europe was a grim place. The people were ravaged by repeated waves of plague that ripped through the Continent. A third of the population succumbed to its wrath. It was recorded in 1347 that plague had arrived in Southern Europe, and by 1350 had spread like wildfire to the cities of England, Russia and Germany. The death toll nudged the authorities to devise and employ effective albeit extreme infection control measures.
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