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COVID-19 Pandemic and Public Health Law – By Oluwatomi Ajayi, LLM

Coronavirus also known as COVID-19 is said to be a zoonotic disease which has been traced to Wuhan, China. A zoonosis is an infectious disease caused by pathogens that spread from animals to humans. These pathogens could be in the form of viruses, bacteria, fungi or other microorganisms and they cause human infectious diseases such as Ebola, Zika, Lassa, bird flu, etc which have crossed from animals to human beings.

In this current Covid-19 outbreak which has turned to a pandemic, major cities around the world are growing empty as this virus has infected more than a million lives. Indeed, it has not only become a contagion which is negatively impacting the biodiversity as well as the economy,it has also become a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Medical experts say each person who gets the virus statistically infect two or three other people in turn which makes everyone a COVID-19 suspect.

Where public health is concerned, the primary attention is the health of the community and the prevention of diseases. In this respect, public health has a nexus with activities that focus on early diagnoses and prompt treatment of diseases such as screening, early interventions, medical intelligence surveillance, contact tracking, disease notification and control, all of which are known to reduce morbidity and mortality. Essentially, the discipline of public health is wide because it comprises of both the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts of the government, health workers and the society. It further uses the instrumentality of law to enforce laws or regulations that give directives on how to protect health and solve community or global health issues. It should be noted that public health practitioners are of the view that diseases do not just descend on earth without a source. This is unlike in the medieval period when the cause of diseases was attributed to supernatural forces until the discovery of the ‘Germ Theory of Disease’ which enabled the Disease Detectives to classify diseases into communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases and further investigate outbreaks and track or trace infectious diseases once they occur. The law however defines infectious diseases as a quarantinable disease or any other infectious or contagious disease and of note is the historical development of modern public health and infectious disease law which derived its origin from the cholera epidemics (1830-1847) and in response the first International Sanitary Conference was convened in 1859 to discuss the infectious disease governance. Thereafter in 1946, the World Health Organization (WHO) was established to regulate international health regulations and public health laws.

In combating the COVID-19 outbreak, advancing public health security and safety usually require the following framework;

• Minimizing our exposure to other people by adopting social distancing, shelter in-place, stay-at-home, lower the curve, transport restrictions, partial or total lockdown, visitor restrictions, self-isolation, quarantine orders and border closures.(In India, these methods are generally called the ‘People’s Curfew against Coronavirus’);
• Observing state environmental laws or local environmental bye-laws on disease prevention and containment because health and environment are interconnected;
• Obligations of government policies at all levels to respect, protect and fulfil their citizens human rights to health and further ensure health institutions are equipped with relevant tools needed to provide equitable emergency care;
• Adhering to the international medical practice guidelines for health monitoring and disease control, for example all countries must operate within the framework of the World Health Organization; and
• Because COVID-19 crisis rely heavily on scientific knowledge, it must be ensured that disease prevention and control measures are based on scientific evidence and public health principles knowing fully well that the obligations to advance public health services are grounded in scientific methodologies.

In the context of a pandemic and in the interest of public health safety, immediate priority of the law is targeted towards protecting people from COVID-19 and prevent the spread. That is why government must take the threat to public health seriously in order to limit the spread and impact of the virus. The applicable laws that are relevant in Nigeria for example include:

• Constitution of the1999 Constitution
• Public Health Laws LFN 2004
• Quarantine Act LFN 2004
• COVID-19 Regulations of 2020
• Lagos State Infectious Diseases (Emergency Prevention) Regulations 2020
• WHO Nomenclature Regulations 1967
• International Health Regulations 2005

In summary, it is important to emphasize that law is one side of the coin in public health matters because one can set health and safety standards with law. Equally, public health law is driven by science which deploys law as a tool to achieve public health safety and goals especially where government or its law or health enforcement agencies need to sanction violators who breach public health law or public health directives. For instance public health law can intrude on an individual’s personal interests or liberty, because certain rights are not absolute in the first place. To protect against potential epidemics, the Court may want to forego individual liberty for public health reasons as was stated in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905).

Oluwatomi A. Ajayi, LLM is a member of NBA Ikeja Branch

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