Nebraska Medicine infectious disease experts release open-access book on quarantine and isolation

Four University of Nebraska Medical Center physicians who also have roles in the Global Center for Health Security at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine, recently released an open-access book about quarantine.

The book, published before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, is available through Amazon and the University of Nebraska Press.

“Nebraska Isolation and Quarantine Manual,” the book, shares practical aspects of why, how and when to apply quarantine and isolation for conditions that warrant care in biocontainment or quarantine. It also includes the history of quarantine and its legal and ethical considerations.

The book was written and edited from lessons learned at UNMC during the West Africa Ebola virus outbreak.

The authors say the book is especially useful for medical, nursing and public health personnel who work in medical centers, clinics and in the community, as well as for students in the health professions.

Ted Cieslak, Mark Kortepeter, Christopher Kratochvil, and James Lawler, co-edited the book. The book covers historical and legal aspects of quarantine and isolation on high-consequence infectious diseases that might be considered for specialized care in a biocontainment unit.

“Given our experience in managing Ebola during the West African outbreak, the fact that we possess the nation’s largest biocontainment unit, and we just opened the nation’s first (and only) federal quarantine facility, we felt that we possessed the unique expertise necessary to produce such a book,” Cieslak, medical director of the National Quarantine Unit at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Despite the voluminous nature of the medical literature, we could find no other text designed to be a practical resource for clinicians, policy makers and public health officials in the field. We felt it was incumbent upon us to write one.”

“We had no idea how timely the book arrival would be, given the current COVID-19 pandemic. We are pleased this might be beneficial for medical personnel across the world in a time of need,” Kortepeter, professor of epidemiology in the UNMC College of Public Health, said in a statement. “There is not a lot of specific information about what diseases quarantine should and should not apply to, which is what makes this document even the more useful.”