Stay-at-home order

For stay-at-home orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, see COVID-19 lockdowns.

A stay-at-home order, safer-at-home order, movement control order – also referred to by loose use of the terms quarantine, isolation, or lockdown – is an order from a government authority that restricts movements of a population as a mass quarantine strategy for suppressing or mitigating an epidemic or pandemic by ordering residents to stay home except for essential tasks or for work in essential businesses. The medical distinction between such an order and a quarantine is that a quarantine is usually understood to involve isolating only selected people who are considered to be possibly infectious rather than the entire population of an area (though many colloquially refer to stay-at-home orders as quarantines). In many cases, outdoor activities are allowed. Non-essential businesses are either closed or adapted to remote work.[1] In some regions, it has been implemented as a round-the-clock curfew[2] or called a shelter-in-place order,[3] but it is not to be confused with a shelter-in-place situation.[4]

Similar measures have been used around the world, and, both officially and colloquially, different names have been used to refer to them, often only very loosely linked to the term's actual medical meaning. Examples include confinement, (self-) isolation, (self-) quarantine, lockdown or ‘strict social distancing measures’.[5] Stay-at-home orders have colloquially (and sometimes officially) been referred to as quarantine or lockdown – but some officials have a concern that the word lockdown may send a wrong message for people to incorrectly think that it includes door-to-door searching for infected people to be forced into quarantines similar to the Hubei lockdown.[6]

  1. ^ "What You Can and Cannot Do During a Stay-at-Home or Shelter-in-Place Order". NBC Chicago. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-03-21.
  2. ^ "City of Birmingham under Shelter in Place in order". WBRC. 2020-03-24. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  3. ^ "Coronavirus stay-at-home and shelter-in-place orders, by state". USA Today. 2020-03-30. Retrieved 2020-03-30.
  4. ^ Sedensky, Matt (2020-03-20). "In pandemic, word definitions shift and new lexicon emerges". Associated Press.
  5. ^ Kottasová, Ivana (2020-03-17). "Coronavirus lockdowns: 24 hours of confusion around the world". CNN. Archived from the original on 2020-04-24. Retrieved 2020-03-24.
  6. ^ Sedensky, Matt (2020-03-20). "In pandemic, word definitions shift and new lexicon emerges". The Associated Press. Retrieved 2020-03-24.