Due to the disruption that protective sequestration can cause, it is typically considered only under exceptional circumstances where implementation and enforcement are feasible.
[1] The term avoids the use of the word quarantine, which, in public health, refers to the voluntary or enforced detention of a person who, because of actual or possible contact with an infectious agent, may have become infected and therefore be capable of passing it along to others.
[citation needed] An advantage of protective sequestration is that it shields selected people from infection and possibly buys them time for the development and distribution of drugs or vaccine.
[citation needed] During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, factors that contributed to the rare successes of protective sequestration were the following: The best known historical example is the measures taken by the town of Gunnison, Colorado, during the 1918 influenza epidemic.
[5] In the South Pacific, the Governor of American Samoa, John Martin Poyer, imposed a reverse cordon sanitaire of the islands from all incoming ships, successfully achieving zero deaths within the territory during the influenza epidemic.