Quarantine

1. Quarantine (from Italian: quaranta giorni, forty days) is the act of keeping people or animals separated for a period of time before, for instance, allowing them to enter another country. By doing this, it is possible to limit the risk of spreading disease. In the case of people, quarantine usually raises questions of civil rights, especially in cases of long confinement or segregation from society, such as that of Mary Mallon, a typhoid fever carrier.

2. Quarantine is a science fiction novel by Greg Egan.