QUARANTINE BARRIERS

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 284, 27 August 1919, Page 7

QUARANTINE BARRIERS

LESSONS OF THE EPIDEMIC. Interesting deductions as to the efficiency of the maritime quarantine barrier which was employed liy the Federal authorities in Australia with a view to keeping influenza oir. of the Commonwealth are made (states the "Ago") in a report prepared by the Director of Quarantine, which has just been issued. It is pointed out thufc no other country attempted a quarantine defence, and contriisls are drawn between the violent epidemics of influenza that have raged in other parts of the world and the more protracted but far milder epidemic that eventually developed in Australia. Dr. Cumpston states that there ie no evidence of any traceablo connection between any quarantined vessel and any shore epidemic of influenza in Australia. He mentions that there was a period of four weeks between llio arrival of the last infected vessel and the , first shore case notified, and claims that there is no positive evidence that the influenza in Australia was due to the escape of infection through '.he quarantine first line of defence. , On the other'hand there is, he , ' poinvs out, -much evidence in support of the hypothesis that the present epidemic form of influenza is the product uf a slow- evolution of an influenza already established in Australia in July and Au-' gust, 1918. Dr. Cumpston states that the consistent history of epidemics is that a variety of infectious diseases assume a world-wide prevalence during periods of post-war readjustment, and lie goes on to say that.it maybe confidently expected that history will repeat itself during the next five .years.