By Padmashree Gehl Sampath
As the search for COVID-19 treatments and vaccines continues, questions of pricing and access are beginning to emerge.
How can pharmaceutical companies determine fair prices for these therapies? And how can they ensure that all those who need these treatments are able to access them? These are valid concerns in the current global pharmaceutical landscape, where in recent years, soaring drug prices have been an issue for almost all governments.
Cross-posted from The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, where it originally appeared on May 26, 2020.
By Stephen P. Wood
During a recent shift, I was the primary provider for a man in his 70s who was brought in by ambulance with respiratory failure. He had been sick for two days with a fever and a cough, weak and short of breath. The chest x-ray performed at his bedside revealed the diffuse, fluffy markings that are familiar signs of pneumonitis from COVID-19.
After giving him oxygen to improve his breathing, treating his fever, and running tests that are standard for COVID-19 patients, I clicked the admission button to cue him up for a bed. My patient and I then discussed goals of care and had a frank discussion about advance directives. He did not have an advance directive, but he knew he did not want to be resuscitated. He did not want to be put on a ventilator, go on dialysis, or receive artificial nutrition. He was quite clear and did not hesitate about these decisions. We signed the advance directive and filed it away in his chart.
Although some of the common challenges identified across our global survey of legal responses to COVID-19 have their roots in long-established realities, the economic and social inflection point created by COVID-19 provides an opportunity, as well as an imperative, to consider how these responses will shape social norms and structure democratic institutions in the post-pandemic world.
By Katherine Drabiak
The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently struck down the state’s Safer at Home Order, calling it “unlawful, invalid, unenforceable.” Wisconsin Gov. Evers, politicians, and the media responded with outrage, alleging the decision would “throw the state into chaos” and demonstrated “reckless disregard for human life.”
These characterizations both misrepresent what the case was about and omit meaningful discussion of what state laws do – and do not – permit when responding to communicable disease.
By Nicolas Terry, LLM and Tara Sklar, JD, MPH
This post is part II of a two-part series on COVID-19 and care facilities. In the first installment we assessed the centrality of care facilities to the COVID-19 pandemic and outlined the infection risks for residents and workers. In this second installment we will explore how improved regulation and enforcement, combined with liability rules, provide the best path forward to improve an industry that, despite its deficiencies, claims it deserves exceptional immunity.
By Csaba Győry
Hungary was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce restrictions in order to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections.
Policy wise, the restrictions overall were similar to those of other European countries. The legal basis for these restrictions, however, has proven very controversial because of the extremely broad sway it provides the executive, and has received a great deal of attention from EU institutions, scholars, and the press.
This is the conundrum of the Hungarian response to COVID-19: an almost unlimited authorization for the executive to rule by decree, which, at the same time, was used relatively sparingly and in a broadly similar manner as in other EU countries.
On March 24, 2020, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, jointly run by Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, put out a call for essays and articles on governance in a time of pandemic. Between April 22 and May 28, it published 25 articles, all of which are available at the Journal’s website free of charge. We expect that more than 20 additional pieces will join them over the next month or so. The following is a regularly updated list, organized by date and time of publication, of what has been published in that special issue to date.
By Woosung Hwang
South Korea has been hailed for its swift and thorough response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the response has come at a cost, affecting the privacy and rights of the country’s citizens.
South Korea had its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on January 20th, 2020. As of June 8th, 2020, South Korea has 11,814 cases, and 273 fatalities.
The Argentinian response to COVID-19 has concentrated power in the hands of the Executive, restricted fundamental constitutional rights, and militarized public space.
By Rob Gatter and Seema Mohapatra
This is an excerpt of an essay first published in the Washington and Lee Law Review Online here.
As a counter-measure to the COVID-19 pandemic, should wearing masks in public be required or merely recommended?