Iso­late, quar­an­tine, stay home were the new mantra of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last week as he an­nounced new mea­sures to bat­tle the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19).

From mid­night to­day, the spe­cial stay-at-home mea­sure will be im­ple­ment­ed with all non-es­sen­tial work­ers be­ing asked to stay home.

The pub­lic has been hear­ing these words a lot these days as au­thor­i­ties try to stem the spread of COVID-19 that’s sweep­ing the world. While they are not the same thing, they all have the goal of keep­ing oth­ers from get­ting in­fect­ed.

But what do they mean, ex­act­ly?

Here are some brief ex­pla­na­tions as ex­plained by some in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts yes­ter­day.

Quar­an­tine

This is for peo­ple who may have been ex­posed to the virus.

They are asked to stay at home or, as in the case with peo­ple who were repa­tri­at­ed to their home coun­tries, to stay in a pro­vid­ed fa­cil­i­ty.

They’re re­quired to be in quar­an­tine for 14 days.

Af­ter that, peo­ple who still don’t test pos­i­tive for the virus no longer have to be in a con­tained en­vi­ron­ment.

Some peo­ple may be asked to self-quar­an­tine—mean­ing they do it vol­un­tar­i­ly.

Those with the virus who need to be hos­pi­talised will be kept in an iso­la­tion unit.

Iso­late

Peo­ple who have been in­fect­ed with the virus may be asked to self-iso­late at home if they have no symp­toms or are on­ly mild­ly ill.

Those in iso­la­tion should keep away from oth­er peo­ple as much as pos­si­ble.

In these in­stances, of­fi­cials rec­om­mend us­ing a sep­a­rate bath­room if avail­able, wear­ing a face mask when around oth­ers and not shar­ing the house­hold items.

Stay at home

This lit­er­al­ly trans­lates to stay­ing where you are un­til the coast is clear.

This means these per­sons shouldn’t be out un­less get­ting food, gas or oth­er es­sen­tials, or for med­ical rea­sons.

Go­ing out­side for a walk or ex­er­cise is al­lowed, and even en­cour­aged, but peo­ple are asked to keep their dis­tance from oth­ers. It’s all about so­cial dis­tanc­ing, and by now, we prob­a­bly all know that means keep­ing six feet apart from oth­er peo­ple when out and about.