Via Nine O'Clock, an English-language Romanian news source: Authorities lift human quarantine for avian flu hit areas. Evidently the quarantine didn't make much sense, and wasn't fully obeyed.
Health Ministry issued a document yesterday [May 25] for all local authorities in the avian flu hit areas not to place humans under quarantine anymore. The decision comes after thousands of people were isolated for at least two days since the first avian influenza outbreak at the end of last year in Romania.
Rodica Costinea, General Director with the Health Ministry, said yesterday that the human quarantine is no longer necessary since the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a new recommendation on May 24 saying that it is enough placing disinfection filters at the entrance and exit in an area where cases of avian influenza in birds occurred.
“WHO does not recommend anymore placing a restriction on people’s moving in and outside the hotbeds”, Costinea said yesterday. However, the WHO website has no indication of a new recommendation like the one invoked by Romanian authorities.
Moreover, International Herald Tribune quotes Maria Cheng, Spokeswoman for the WHO in Geneva saying that “generally WHO does not recommend that the movement of people is restricted to contain an animal outbreak.”
Officials from the World Health Organisation told IHT that they believed it to be the first time that the movements of so many people were restricted because of bird flu. The Romanian authorities said the tough measures were necessary when the virus threatened an urban area, an assertion WHO disputes.
Ever since the new outbreak of avian influenza in Romania thousands of people were placed under quarantine and were not able to go to work for as long as authorities decided.
The order given by the Health Ministry yesterday for all local authorities to lift human quarantine in the areas where avian flu appeared was ignored by some.
Over 200 people were still isolated yesterday in Bucharest’s District 4 following an order by the local mayor, Adrian Inimaroiu. The quarantine was still kept in the second area in District 4, where avian influenza occurred although the culling of all domestic birds was done by afternoon and the area was disinfected.
