Quarantine

2 Pimlico barns get state OK This morning, the Maryland Jockey Club's blanket quarantine of the Pimlico Race Course stable area is to be lifted, barring any overnight setbacks, allowing most of the 500 horses there to return to racing. The general release came one day after the Maryland Department of Agriculture released its hold orders on two Pimlico barns that had been quarantined since equine herpes first appeared at the track in early January. Tests on all horses in Barn 5, where the virus was first suspected, and Barn 8, the isolation barn where horses that became sick with the disease were stabled, were negative.

Just weeks after it turned up in Howard County, the emerald ash borer has been detected in Anne Arundel and Allegany counties. Maryland agriculture officials have responded by placing all Maryland counties west of the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay under quarantine. Movement of ash wood and trees, and all hardwood firewood, out of the zone is banned, and all movement of hardwood firewood within the zone is discouraged. "Buy it where you burn it," officials urged. The quarantine is "the best way to secure Maryland's Eastern Shore, where EAB has not been found to date, and protect our riparian forest buffer plantings," said state Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance.

There's a new foreign insect pest stalking Maryland's pine trees, and state agriculture officials expanded the pine shoot beetle quarantine zone Friday into Baltimore's suburbs in a bid to slow the pest's advance toward valuable loblolly pine timberlands on the Eastern Shore. The state is especially concerned about reaching small Christmas tree farmers who might not be aware of the threat, so that inspectors can monitor their farms and enlist them in the battle. "Even though we haven't seen much damage in Maryland, we're … on the front lines, trying to keep it from moving into the big, pine-producing regions in the South, including the Eastern Shore," said Carol Holko, manager of the state Agriculture Department's Plant Protection and Weed Management Section.

There's a new foreign insect pest stalking Maryland's pine trees, and state agriculture officials expanded the pine shoot beetle quarantine zone Friday into Baltimore's suburbs in a bid to slow the pest's advance toward valuable loblolly pine timberlands on the Eastern Shore. The state is especially concerned about reaching small Christmas tree farmers who might not be aware of the threat, so that inspectors can monitor their farms and enlist them in the battle. "Even though we haven't seen much damage in Maryland, we're … on the front lines, trying to keep it from moving into the big, pine-producing regions in the South, including the Eastern Shore," said Carol Holko, manager of the state Agriculture Department's Plant Protection and Weed Management Section.

"Quarantine," by Jim Crace, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 256 pages. $24. This reimagining of Christ's 40 days of trial, fasting and temptation in the desert before his return to Nazareth is prefaced with a scholarly disclaimer: "medicine opposes" the credibility of such an arduous feat being achieved by "an ordinary man of average weight and fitness."The bold, iconoclastic English writer once more throws down the gauntlet to his readers. Jim Crace wants us to embark upon his hallucinatory novel with a tabula rasa.

The county health department has ordered quarantine measures at two county nursing homes due to a seasonal outbreak of flu-like illnesses.Deputy County Health Officer Larry Leitch said officials take these steps nearly every year at nursing homes to protect patients from developing flu or pneumonia."

More than 100 pigs have vanished from a farm in western Carroll County that is under quarantine because of trichinosis. Officials were concerned that the pigs from the Marston farm of Carroll Schisler Sr. may have been taken to slaughterhouses. "The immediate public health concern - especially with the history of that farm - is that some of his pigs have shown up with trichinosis. ... That's something you don't want in the food chain," said Larry Leitch, the county's health officer. Schisler said he can't find 104 of the 105 pigs that were on the property, according to his attorney, Roland Walker.

The emerald ash borer, a small beetle from Asia that is blamed for the destruction of 20 million trees in Michigan, has made its way to Maryland. Testing by the state Department of Agriculture last week detected beetle-infested ash trees in Prince George's County between Clinton and Brandywine. The state imposed a quarantine that prohibits moving ash trees, logs, fallen banches, stumps or roots in or out of Prince George's County until further notice. The quarantine also bans transporting of ash firewood or any hardwood firewood - including oak, maple and cherry - in or out of the county.

The Maryland Jockey Club yesterday stepped up its fight against the equine herpes virus 1 that has broken out at Pimlico Race Course and quarantined the entire stable area, barring all 500 horses stabled there from leaving the premises. "Pimlico is closed until further notice," said MJC chief operating officer Lou Raffetto. "This is a precautionary measure. It is in our best interest to restrict the movement in and out of Pimlico until we know if the last horse that got sick in Barn A has the disease.

State agriculture officials have extended indefinitely the quarantine at a western Carroll County livestock farm while state and county officials work with the owner on several health and animal-welfare issues. The state imposed a 30-day ban on the sale, slaughter or transfer of animals or animal products April 1. Officials have inspected the 112-acre farm in Marston, owned by Carroll Schisler Sr., 59, and his son, Carroll Schisler Jr., 33, several times since then. "The quarantine is extended indefinitely through the process of compliance," said Sue DuPont, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture.

A group of Maryland teen volleyball players was released Monday from a quarantined Beijing hotel, where they had been held after taking the same flight as a person who later developed illness from the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu. Tarver Shimek, 16, a rising senior at Towson High School, said she was glad to be able to finish a trip with fellow travelers from the Maryland Junior Volleyball Club. As Chinese authorities assessed her health risks, she spent more than three days in the hotel, she said, making up games like "hotel tag" with other teenagers.

Three-vehicle accident sends car into bank 3 A three-vehicle accident Friday in Owings Mills sent a car crashing into a bank and two people to an area hospital, Baltimore County police said. The accident happened about noon at an M&T Bank branch in the 9800 block of Reisterstown Road when the driver of a Hyundai Sonata slammed into the back of a Toyota RAV4 that was waiting at a red light, according to police. The Toyota then hit a Lincoln Navigator that was leaving a nearby shopping center.

William Sinkabine Miller, a retired medical research scientist who helped run the 1969 Apollo 11 lunar mission's post-flight quarantine lab, died of cancer Sunday at the Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Timonium resident was 80. Born in Berryville, Va., he earned a bachelor's degree in microbiology at the University of Maryland, College Park and a doctorate from George Washington University. He studied at the Harvard Business School and served in the Air Force in Japan. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Miller worked in military biological testing at Fort Detrick in Frederick.

WASHINGTON -- A Georgia man with a highly infectious strain of tuberculosis, whose travels last month caused an international health scare, told Congress yesterday that he had no idea he was contagious. "I don't want this, and I wouldn't have wanted to give it to someone else," said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer who is under quarantine at a Denver hospital. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "knew that I had this. ... I was repeatedly told I was not contagious, that I was not a threat to anyone," he said.

A Georgia man infected with a potentially deadly form of drug-resistant tuberculosis told a newspaper that health authorities here never explicitly barred him from leaving on an overseas trip that might have exposed hundreds of people in the U.S., Europe and Canada. The man, who spoke to the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Tuesday, said health officials only said that they "preferred" he stay home in the Atlanta area. The man then reportedly left for Europe to get married. Yesterday, officials from the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that they clearly and emphatically told him to stay put. "He was told in no uncertain terms that he had a serious, contagious disease," said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health.

Say you've just discovered that your wife, who you thought had been devoured long ago by infectious zombies, has somehow survived and now is being held under quarantine by the authorities. Do you: A) Thank God she survived and patiently wait for the doctors to clear her? Or, 28 Weeks Later (Fox Atomic) Starring Robert Carlyle, Catherine McCormack, Emily Beecham. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Rated R. Time 88 minutes.

After several hours of planning yesterday morning, the carcass of a young female fin whale was hoisted from its overnight berth at the Dundalk Marine Terminal, dumped into a large truck and carted off to a landfill, where scientists took her measurements and samples of her skin and blubber.The whale weighed 16 1/2 tons and was 43 feet long, said John Jarkowiec, senior mammalogist at the National Aquarium at Baltimore. Aquarium staff members worked at the Quarantine Road landfill with a mammalogist from the Smithsonian Institution, where the information will be cataloged.

At the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Carroll County Humane Society will trap wild animals living in the vicinity of a quarantined Marston farm beginning Monday in order to test them for a potentially deadly parasite, officials said yesterday. Raccoons, possums, foxes and skunks, all of which may feed on carcasses, will be captured in box traps, euthanized and tested for "trichinella spiralis" to determine if pigs escaping from the farm infected surrounding wildlife.

VILLANOVA, Pa. -- With his medical condition in question for much of the week, Towson sophomore quarterback Sean Schaefer didn't even practice until Friday - just 24 hours before the start of yesterday's game. And without him last week against Massachusetts, Towson was shut out at home for the first time since 1997. But yesterday, Schaefer looked as though he had never been away - much to the delight of his teammates and coaches - throwing for 324 yards and two touchdown passes to help propel the Tigers to a 21-13 win over Villanova before 8,111 at Villanova Stadium.