1. How effective were Australian Quarantine Stations in mitigating transmission aboard ships during the influenza pandemic of 1918-19?
- Author
-
Alahakoon P, Taylor PG, and McCaw JM
- Subjects
- Humans, Pandemics prevention & control, Bayes Theorem, Hospitals, Isolation, Australia epidemiology, Disease Outbreaks prevention & control, Travel, Ships, Influenza, Human epidemiology, Influenza, Human prevention & control
- Abstract
The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 was the most devastating pandemic of the 20th century. It killed an estimated 50-100 million people worldwide. In late 1918, when the severity of the disease was apparent, the Australian Quarantine Service was established. Vessels returning from overseas and inter-state were intercepted, and people were examined for signs of illness and quarantined. Some of these vessels carried the infection throughout their voyage and cases were prevalent by the time the ship arrived at a Quarantine Station. We study four outbreaks that took place on board the Medic, Boonah, Devon, and Manuka in late 1918. These ships had returned from overseas and some of them were carrying troops that served in the First World War. By analysing these outbreaks under a stochastic Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework, we estimate the transmission rates among crew and passengers aboard these ships. Furthermore, we ask whether the removal of infectious, convalescent, and healthy individuals after arriving at a Quarantine Station in Australia was an effective public health response., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Alahakoon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF