Contact Tracing in the Context of COVID-19: Ethical Issues and Assessment

The COVID-19 outbreak spread like a forest fire in the first quarter of 2020. Until September, more than 26 million people were affected by this epidemic. It has been 9 months since the first case was seen. However, a curative treatment method or vaccine has not been developed yet. Today, the only approach that can prevent the outbreak is classical epidemic control approaches such as hygiene, case isolation, contact tracing and quarantine. Contact tracing aims to reduce the spread of the epidemic by trying to analyze the potential transmission routes of the infection at the individual level. In addition, it will be possible to prevent official measures such as the curfew taken to prevent the epidemic from spreading. However, when considering ways of communication between people, the epidemic knows no boundaries. Mobile applications and artificial intelligence can be successful in analyzing this contact chain. Even if protecting human life is the highest degree moral duty, these methods contain many ethical problems. The most violated ethical values because of these practices are privacy, confidentiality of information, civil freedom and autonomy. In this study, we will try to analyze the ethical problems that arise with contact tracing mobile applications in the context of COVID-19. © 2021, DOC Design and Informatics Co. Ltd.. All rights reserved.