International Law & Ethics Amidst Pandemics: Responses Of Different Political States In A Pandemic

Introduction:

This article will evaluate the key issue of international law amidst a pandemic containing firstly, the application of international law in managing global pandemics; secondly, to look into the ongoing pandemic; thirdly, how these different nation-states are tackling this global pandemic altogether; and lastly a conclusion is drawn on the overall analysis of the article.

Amongst all the other pandemics in history, the current ragging pandemic of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease- 2019) is the subject matter of this article.

History:

There have been a huge number of disastrous/deadly health outbreaks in history listing from the black death (the plague) in the 14th century, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (the Spanish Flu), the 2009 Flu pandemic (H1N1), the Ebola Epidemic, the Mad Cow disease and many more, to the present/ most recent outbreak of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) leading to the death of our human resource in different continents on a very large scale.

Amongst all the other pandemics in history, the current ragging pandemic of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease- 2019) is the subject matter of this article.

COVID-19 has caused havoc all over the world bringing about a global setback by threatening the national infrastructure and economy.

With the globalization of trade and human relations, the threat and spread of these pandemics is effortless.

“globally, infectious diseases remain the leading killers of human beings. More than a quarter of all deaths today are linked to infectious diseases, with the developing world facing the brunt of the problem” (Payne, 2013: 276)

Current Pandemic- 2019-2020 Coronavirus (Sars-Cov2) Pandemic

The origin of the present pandemic of SARS CoV2 was found to be spreading rapidly from the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China in December 2019. Being a highly communicable disease spreading merely from human contact, it then started multiplying drastically in other parts of the country. In merely 3 months this virus has spread so far as creating a complete lockdown in major parts of the world.

Being a novel virus, nobody had prognosticated it to be as dangerous as it is and scientists are still finding a vaccine for the cure of coronavirus infected patients.

Now the governments of almost all the nation-states have asked the people to follow social distancing, self-quarantines, and stay at home as much as possible; being (sine qua non) the absolutely necessary thing.

Nations around the globe have been locked down which is majorly done to promote “social distancing” and thereby to reduce the spread. Technological assistance has also proved to be very helpful to countries that have hi-tech resources.

Applicability Of International Law In Managing Global Pandemics

International law is formulated to bring all the different political states under one umbrella of unity, bonafide. Although international law is considered to be a good law as it is based on the various agreements and charters between nation-states and is supposed to be driving all these differing political economies towards one spectrum of global peace and harmony on one equal stage. But in the shadow of global politics, the world is divided into dominant superpowers and developing countries. The setback of this division is faced by all the states together when we come across such deadly pandemics. The dominant nation-states tend to overshadow the law as the wings of international law (i.e., WHO, WTO. UNICEF, etc) are not legally binding. International law is based on the principle of ‘Pacta sunt servanda’ meaning ‘agreements must be kept”; but do not have a capacity to check upon the application of their sanctions and guidelines and thus stand only morally binding. A good law is nullified if it is not applied in an appropriate manner.

But the question that arises is who brings unity, international law or pandemic?

The significance of this question will be radiant from the fact of how these different political states have responded amidst a global health crisis that is destroying the very existence of human resources on a large scale.

The WHO guidelines specify that all the states should revert back immediately to the ‘shut all borders’ reflex in the face of such communicable diseases which is out of concern for the public health and to immediately stop the spread.

Article 15 of the International Health Regulation (IHR) (2005) gives powers to the Director-General of WHO to mandate temporary recommendations in case of international public health emergencies. In the second meeting of the emergency committee convened by WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom on Thursday, 30 January 2020 regarding the outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019 in the People’s Republic of China, with exportations to other countries, the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) have strongly suggested isolations /quarantines in all the regions.

Article 1 of the IHR defines “isolation” as; “isolation” means separation of ill or contaminated persons or affected baggage, containers, conveyances, goods or postal parcels from others in such a manner as to prevent the spread of infection or contamination.

Article 11 states that WHO should take all the necessary steps possible to convey the information to other state parties that might help them in controlling the escalation of such a situation.

Categorisation Of Nation States:

Firstly, to simplify the study of the article let us categorise these different nation-states.

According to the World Economic Situation and Prospectus, 2019 (WESP) all the countries of the world come under one of the three broad categories on the basis of their per capita Gross National Income (GNI):

• TYPE A- Developed Economies;
• TYPE B- Economies in Transition;
• TYPE C- Developing Economies.

Response Of Type A Countries:

USA

USA saw the dark side of being a Federal Governance, lacking unity in decision making even in case of such health emergencies and in no time became the next epicentre of Covid-19 as was predicted by WHO. Disturbingly, the federal response has been slow to address the necessary steps. Due to the uneven exercise of the public health powers by the State and local authorities, the virus has been multiplied exponentially.

The first confirmed case of 2019-nCoV in the United States was reported on January 20, 2020. But even after the knowledge of the threat, the state was unable to take immediate preventive steps to stop the spread.

The Easter weekend saw an upsurge in the infected patients mounting up to half a million with 18700 deaths, throwing the biggest question of when would it be safe to reopen the country amidst this crisis.

Although the US government had closed all the borders as the very first preventive measure, but there was seen a lack of internal medical security as many of the offices, schools, universities, churches, malls, etc were open even after the foreseeable threat of the virus. It was only after when a huge rise in infection was established, the whole country faced a blanket lockdown.

Inter alia, the US has now called upon the Public Health Service Act, 1944 (last amended in 2019 December) which gives an organised structure to deal with public health emergency; and the Defense Production Act 1950, towards a fight against the pandemic.

President Trump, on March 2020, signed the new Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) bill. Major highlights of the Act are related to employment and labor laws, educational institutions, health care providers, life sciences and biotech companies, and Native American tribes. The Centre will assist the State and local governments by granting $150 billion as aid which will be distributed on the quantum meruit.

Thus, the deficiency of inter-jurisdictional synchronization has cost lives.

Germany

Germany on the other hand did not let the pandemic take hold of their internal stability and it reacted to the real and urgent threat. The federal government was not slow in identifying and investigating the first cases, being well acquainted with the growth pattern of the virus and; the overall motive is to control the carrier of the virus, block the transmission and stop the further spread.

Canada

The Canadian federal government handles most of its health crisis at the provincial level through support and coordination of the Centre, as most of the provinces possess an Act of their own. Such crises are administered by the Emergency Act, 1988, and the Public Emergency Management Act, 2007, at the Federal tier.

According to this Act, the Federal government has the capacity to control the movement of individuals, the supply of essential commodities, to set up emergency hospitals and imposition of penalties. Although the Quarantine Act of 2005 gives more powers to the provincial government for isolation of patients and imposing fines.

Japan

Japan declared a state emergency on the 7th of April, 2020.

UK

The UK government adopted the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, 1984. This Act distributes the responsibilities between different levels of authorities in power, in dealing with a national health emergency.

On the 23rd of March, a Coronavirus Bill was presented in the House of Commons, now forwarded in the House of Lords; which includes giving more powers to the police to impose isolation on the virus affected people, shut down ports, providing measures to increase the healthcare staff such as re-hiring of retired staff, less documentation for discharge of patients and more.

Australia

In Australia, the National Health Security Act, 2007 along with the National Security Health Arrangement 2008 and the National Health Security Regulations, 2008; which results in the WHO’s International Health Regulations (2005). These Acts anticipate, prevent, and deal in wholesome with the national health crisis. It gives powers to the appropriate authorities at the national domain to direct and supervise the several provinces following a law of their own. The 2008 Act(s) mainly boosts the health inspection and broadcasting system for communicable diseases. The Australian government also has sophisticated committees, set up especially in case of disease epidemics, such as the Australian Health Protection Committee, National Health Emergency Management Subcommittee, Communicable Diseases Network Australia, Public Health Laboratory Network, and Australian Medical Assistance Teams. They also have a strict federal quarantine law on the reasons for quarantining the deceased and punishments for those who fail to follow these laws.

Response Of Type B Countries:

South Korea

South Korea having abundant coronavirus testing kits did a widespread test all over the country and isolated the infected patients.

The administration used credit card information, mobile locations, and CCTV footages to trace the infected individuals; which resulted in creating a chart that could stalk the people who have been near the coronavirus patient.

Serbia

The Government of the Republic of Serbia On March 15th, 2020 declared a state of emergency issuing many decrees for public concerns to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

From March 21st onwards public transportation in Serbia has been officially eliminated, except for medical staff and those who cannot work from home can travel via corridor secured lines.

Response Of Type C Countries:

India

India has proved to be one of the most stable countries having subsequently less number of deceased cases even though being the 2nd most populated country has a population of 1,387,297,452 people. The Indian government has acted in a unified manner taking into consideration the risk of the virus beforehand. The Union government imposed the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897; which is although said to be ill-equipped by some critiques.

The government announced a nation-wide lockdown from March 25, 2020, for 3 weeks straight (which was extended afterward looking into the dire situation), ordering for a complete shutdown of schools, colleges, industries, religious institutions, private as well as public offices, or any place of mass public gathering; and only places of necessities like medical stores, hospitals, and grocery stores, were kept open for emergencies.

the Disaster Management Act of 2005 under which notifications have been issued on the said sections namely, Section 6 (1) & (2) gives powers and functions of National Authority for ensuring timely and effective response to the disaster. And Section 10 (2) I evaluate the preparedness at all governmental levels. The state governments are resorting to the use of Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code and other state laws to prohibit the assembly of people.

People started following the steps communicated by the central authorities about social distancing, sanitation among people and self-quarantining. This was widely achieved through people’s support and awareness about the pandemic.

The Indian Railways, intercity as well as suburban passenger trains were suspended from March 22, and the Railway ministry has ordered 5000 such passenger trains to be converted into isolation wards setting an aim to create 80,000 isolation beds for coronavirus patients.

Also, India has helped other countries, Ex gratia, internationally by lifting the ban on exporting the supply of paracetamol and hydroxychloroquine and its raw materials to other neighboring nations who severely need these drugs that are researched for curing the COVID patients, prima facie. India supplies 70% of these drugs worldwide (according to the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance) and has received a thankful notification from US, Brazil and Israel Governments for their medical aid, thereby uplifting Article 44 of the IHR (2005) for collaboration and assistance between the state parties.

China

Chinese response has been very skeptical/hypocritical. The first and foremost step taken by China was to coordinate with WHO and communicate about the virus to other nations. They also formulated a Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on 16-24 February 2020 to prepare the other regions that have not been affected by the virus yet. In this report, they also mentioned the response of countries like Japan and South Korea, who were able to cope up with the crisis better.

The Chinese government has placed the infected persons under a 14-day quarantine, in 24-hour surveillance by fixing CCTV cameras at their residence entrances. Moreover, good use of technological know-how can be seen where drones ask all people to take precautions like put on masks. Also, the health stats of people are detected by digital QR codes on phone applications.

Although a few of China’s actions seem to be extreme to prevent coronavirus by having mobilized its surveillance apparatus; many nations have now sought to advance their individual surveillance systems.

Brazil

The authorities established the Emergency Employment and Income Maintenance Program (PEMER), with the purpose of solving the economic problems faced by labourers and employers due to coronavirus.

Saudi Arabia

Battling with the COVID outbreak the Saudi authorities are trying to save Mecca where crowded slums and labour camps have speeded the broadcast of the infection even with much of the country under a 24-hour curfew.

Singapore

The government in Singapore succeeded in creating an app, called Trace Together, that uses Bluetooth signals between mobile phones to check if the possible transferors of coronavirus have been in near proximity with other people. If the user detects positive with the virus, the health ministry can retrieve their information and discover the individuals that had been in close contact with the infected person.

Singapore has been admired internationally for its attitude in battling the pandemic via strict contact tracing and quarantine attempts; the country has still seen an upsurge in coronavirus patients.

Mexico

Mexican response during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009 was although criticised for being very extreme and irrational in economic terms; as the government ordered all the schools to be shut down, terminate public gatherings and ask the people to stay at home. This brought the City to a standstill for nearly 3 weeks/, causing a huge economic cessation. But this timely response turned out to be beneficial and they were able to survive the epidemic.

The General Health Council of Mexico, on 30 March 2020, issued a decree in the Mexican Federal Official Gazette declaring the State in a sanitary emergency due to force majeure. This majorly specified to suspend all activities of the private, public and social sectors during the “Sanitary Emergency Period” except those classified as “essential”, defined in the order.

Conclusion:

After analysing all these responses of different nation-states, the de facto situation is difficult to picturise, in status quo (currently). The countries are utilizing their best resources to fight against this pandemic and all we can hope is a better future. Most of the nations have understood the depth of such a pandemic and furthermore might be more efficient in planning their defences even from this angle/ even in this sector.

States should collude together at dire circumstances and focus on eradicating this threat, before conspiring in mala fide. Because in the end humanity is greater than politics.

Amidst this pandemic, we all should be extremely thankful to each and every person from the hospital staff, police force, scientific labs, government officials who worked long hours putting their lives at risk to prevent the further spread of the virus. And even all the generous souls who came forward to help the people in need by providing food, water, donations, etc.

Humanity can still be seen at dire situations, or is it a blessing in disguise?

Coming across many theories one of the questions that still prevails is whether the COVID-19 pandemic is a natural spread of disease (Vis major – Act of God.) (Jus Naturale – Natural law), as it looks on the face of it, or a bio-war weapon thrown upon all of us just to climb the steps of being the next superpower? is still to be seen.