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Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic(r = −0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics.

In three controlled experiments among participants with varied combat experience, morally injurious events characterized by killing innocent suspects triggered a greater degree of moral injury and related moral emotions than events characterized by killing non-innocent suspects. Does exposure to events that transgress accepted norms, such as killing innocent civilians, prompt the psychological and emotional consequences of moral injury among soldiers? Moral injury is associated with negative emotions such as guilt, shame and anger, and a sense of betrayal and is identified among veterans following exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIE). We experimentally investigate how PMIE characteristics affect the intensity of MI and related negative moral emotions in participants with varied military experience. We conducted three controlled, randomized experiments. Each exposed male respondents with active combat experience (Study 1) and varied military experience (Study 2) to four textual vignettes describing PMIE (child/adult and innocent/non-innocent suspect) that transpire at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank. In study 3, we exposed participants to two scenarios, where descriptions of police officers enforcing COVID 19 restrictions confronted lockdown violators. Participants assigned to vignettes describing killing an innocent civilian exhibited more intense levels of shame and guilt than those assigned to vignettes describing killing a person carrying a bomb. Religiosity and political ideology were strong predictors of guilt and shame in response to descriptions of checkpoint shootings. These effects disappeared in Study 3, suggesting that political ideology drives MI in intergroup conflict. Background and PMIE-related characteristics affect the development of moral injury. Additionally, lab experiments demonstrate the potential and limitations of controlled studies of moral injury and facilitate an understanding of the aetiology of moral injury in a way unavailable to clinicians. Finally, experimental findings and methodologies offer further insights into the genesis of moral injury and avenues for therapy and prophylaxis.

Following China's example, on March 30, at the direction of US President Donald Trump, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the nation's major public health programmes, issued what it termed “an unprecedented array of temporary regulatory waivers and new rules to equip the American healthcare system with maximum flexibility to respond to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”. The risk–benefit ratio for virtual health care has massively shifted and all the red tape has suddenly been cut.” In Italy, although all 20 regions had implemented national telemedicine guidelines as of 2018, hospital managers have been largely caught off guard by the explosion in digital demand, says Elena Sini, information officer for GVM Care & Research, a network of nine private hospitals in northern Italy. With mobile phone use now globally ubiquitous, technological barriers to the adoption of virtual health care are easily surmountable, even in the most resource-scarce settings, notes Alex Jadad, founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation at the University of Toronto, ON, Canada, where he is the director of the Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation.

There is emerging consensus that a graduated approach to Covid-19–related restrictive measures will be needed. Decisions to continue, modify, or lift restrictions — particularly bans on movement and gathering — could be tailored using individualized risk assessment.

The measures taken so far, consisting primarily of partial restriction mobility, are in the right direction, although some researchers have warned about the pressure placed on the building blocks of the health system.1 Given that the actual extent of an epidemic can only be assessed retrospectively, governments and policy makers are forced to make decisions on the basis of mathematical models of other diseases and previous experiences by other countries taking different actions.2 In Spain, various models simulating the spread of infection and using different assumptions converge in a landscape of a high number of new cases within the next few weeks. According to our models, the current state is associated with a very high risk of saturation of our health system, which is expected to last from March 26 to April 24, 2020 (appendix). [...]we urge the Spanish Government to implement, as swiftly as possible, more drastic measures to minimise the impact of the pandemic on the Spanish population. To implement combined non-pharmacological interventions for several weeks, including complete restriction of movement, work interruption, and social distancing, banning all travel and all non-basic economic activities, together with the intensified use of diagnostic tests in suspected cases has proven to yield good results.3 Also, there is an urgent need to establish a purchasing and supply channel for personal protective equipment, which is currently insufficient for health personnel who are highly exposed to and prone to contagion.

The European Convention on Human Rights recognises this by considering the right to physical integrity under article 8 to be a “qualified right” that can be limited “for the protection of health”.10 If a mandatory vaccination scheme aims in part or whole to reduce harm to others, it is not paternalistic. In April, 2021 in relation to a pre-COVID-19 law, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found that a Czech law requiring compulsory vaccination of children against nine diseases did not violate the article 8 right to physical integrity because the scheme was a proportionate means of protecting public health.15 In several other jurisdictions, courts have reached the same or similar conclusions, including the US Supreme Court's ruling in Jacobson v Massachusetts (1904),16 recent pre-COVID-19 judgments that uphold mandatory vaccination schemes in France,17 Italy,18,19 and Chile,20,21 and COVID-19-specific decisions for programmes in New York, USA,22 and Brazil.23 In most of these decisions, the courts found the schemes gave effect to the right to health. [...]fines and punishments for not complying with the mandate should be effective but not be too onerous.

The proposed Pandemic Agreement must ensure that COVID-19 vaccine nationalism is never repeated; 290 scientists call for action. The proposed Pandemic Agreement must ensure that COVID-19 vaccine nationalism is never repeated; 290 scientists call for action. A nurse administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a man in India

We report and interpret preferences of a sample of the Dutch adult population for different strategies to end the so-called 'intelligent lockdown' which their government had put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a discrete choice experiment, we invited participants to make a series of choices between policy scenarios aimed at relaxing the lockdown, which were specified not in terms of their nature (e.g. whether or not to allow schools to re-open) but in terms of their effects along seven dimensions. These included health-related effects, but also impacts on the economy, education, and personal income. From the observed choices, we were able to infer the implicit trade-offs made by the Dutch between these policy effects. For example, we find that the average citizen, in order to avoid one fatality directly or indirectly related to COVID-19, is willing to accept a lasting lag in the educational performance of 18 children, or a lasting (>3 years) and substantial (>15%) reduction in net income of 77 households. We explore heterogeneity across individuals in terms of these trade-offs by means of latent class analysis. Our results suggest that most citizens are willing to trade-off health-related and other effects of the lockdown, implying a consequentialist ethical perspective. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that the elderly, known to be at relatively high risk of being affected by the virus, are relatively reluctant to sacrifice economic pain and educational disadvantages for the younger generation, to avoid fatalities. We also identify a so-called taboo trade-off aversion amongst a substantial share of our sample, being an aversion to accept morally problematic policies that simultaneously imply higher fatality numbers and lower taxes. We explain various ways in which our results can be of value to policy makers in the context of the COVID-19 and future pandemics.

There has been increasing interest in the use of home monitoring technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic to decrease interpersonal contacts and the resultant risks of exposure for people to the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. This Perspective explores how the accelerated development of these technologies also raises major concerns pertaining to safety and privacy. We make recommendations for needed interventions to ensure safety and review best practices and US regulatory requirements for privacy and security. We discuss, among other topics, Emergency Use Authorizations for medical devices and privacy laws of the USA and Europe. Home monitoring technologies are being rushed to market during the COVID-19 pandemic; here, safety and privacy considerations are discussed.

With the global spread of COVID-19, concerns arise about mass gathering events which will further facilitate disease spread. This report welcomes KSA decision to suspend uma