Health authorities employ similar measures to 100 years ago

As children return to school this week it may come as a surprise to learn their experience is remarkably similar to that of their forebears almost a hundred years ago. New Zealand health authorities issued immunity passports, shut down schools nationwide and quarantined those with a new virus - polio - during epidemics in the early 1900s. After polio first gripped New Zealand in 1914, killing 25 people, epidemics occurred every few years until the early 1960s, when vaccines were developed and eventually eradicated the disease the following decade. Auckland University anthropology lecturer Heather Battles says records show health authorities then and in the 1920s employed similar measures used today.