As the United States marks one year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in more than 500,000 deaths so far and a historic economic recession, 50 top legal experts have convened to offer a new assessment of the U.S. policy response to the crisis in the COVID-19 Policy Playbook: Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.
This project comprises four legal maps, each featuring laws in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, and Switzerland, capturing a detailed view of the implementation of Article 2 of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) IHR(2005), to prevent, protect against, control, and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease. The IHR(2005) is a binding instrument of international law for 194 WHO member states aimed at preventing, protecting, controlling, and responding to the international spread of disease.
Similar to the triaging of patients by health care workers, legal and public health professionals must prioritize and respond to issues of law and ethics in declared public health emergencies. As revealed by the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza outbreak and other events, there are considerable inconsistencies among professionals regarding how to best approach these issues during a public health emergency.
