Optimising Quarantine

Responding to COVID-19 and preparing for the future: Understanding the experiences and needs of specific population groups during home-isolation/quarantine for COVID-19 to inform current and future pandemic responses. Novel respiratory virus outbreaks such as COVID-19 pose a significant threat to public health due to their ability to spread rapidly among populations with little prior immunity.

Objective

In an attempt to contain and slow the spread of infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID- 19, asking members of the general public to undertake isolation or quarantine in their homes can become a key public health protection measure.

Isolation is for when a person has symptoms or a positive diagnosis of COVID-19. Quarantine is for when a person is well but may have been in contact with someone with COVID-19.

Research was conducted via qualitative phone interviews in March and April 2020 to understand the experiences of people who were participating in or had completed community-based isolation/quarantine in Australia related to COVID-19.

Another phase of this research was expanded to include investigation into the experiences that specific population groups were having during home-isolation/quarantine.

Approach

The research study looked to interview people who were 18 years and older, and had been instructed to undertake isolation or quarantine at home by a public health authority for one of the following reasons:

• testing positive to COVID-19
• being identified as a close contact of someone who tested positive to COVID-19 by a public health authority
• returning from overseas or interstate travel.

They had to identify as one or more of the following:

• you are a woman who is pregnant or have given birth within the past 6 weeks (maternal and newborn health)
• you work as a healthcare professional (healthcare workers)
• you are a first-generation migrant to Australia, or an international student currently residing in Australia for study from a non-English-speaking country (multicultural communities)
• you self-identify as having been affected by the bushfires of the summer of 2019/2020.