Legal Issues in Quarantine and Isolation for Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases

Kim, Cheonsoo

According to the current Infectious Disease Prevention Act, quarantine measures can be classified into five types of personal quarantine and two types of property quarantine measures. The first type of personal quarantine measure, usually called isolation, involves forcing hospitalization of ‘infected patients and others’ who have an infectious disease with ‘high risk of transmission’ as declared by the government minister in authority over the matter at an infectious disease control institution or an alternative medical facility when there is a shortage of facilities for infectious disease control. ‘Infected patients and others’ includes ‘infected patients,’ who have been confirmed to show symptoms of the pathogen of the infectious disease that has invaded the body, ‘suspected patients,’ who are suspected of having the pathogen of the infectious disease in the body but are not yet confirmed to be infected patients, and ‘pathogen carriers,’ who show no clinical symptoms but have the pathogen of the infectious disease.