Will quarantine for travellers become normal again?

It wasn’t a coincidence that the US government chose Ellis Island as an immigration station. The crucial word is ‘island’.

Had the RMS Titanic missed that fateful iceberg in 1912, she would eventually have taken up station at a quarantine area at the entrance to the Lower Bay of New York Harbor, to await medical inspectors who would board the ship from a cutter.

The quarantine exam would have been performed aboard, but only for first- or second-class passengers (US citizens were exempt). These would have been inspected for cholera, plague, smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria. A few might have been marked to be sent to Ellis Island for further examination.

Only after the visiting medical inspectors had returned to shore would the Titanic have sailed into the main harbour, docking at the White Star Line’s Pier 59 on Manhattan, There only the pre-vetted cabin-class passengers would have disembarked.