Analysis of Ethical Issues in the Emergency Engineering Management of COVID-19 Epidemic Prevention and Control

Abstract

: COVID-19 poses a huge crisis to human safety and health and social and economic development. COVID-19 prevention and control, regarded as emergency engineering management with complexity, involves multiple parties of interest and presents many ethical dilemmas. Focusing on the various challenges in the operation of the epidemic prevention and control emergency system during early outbreaks in China, the conflicts of interests and values among the four stakeholder groups-local decision makers, medical scientists, health workers, and the public, as well as the moral dilemmas and ethical choices faced by them are discussed. Based on four ethical principles including precautionary principle, informed consent, distributive justice and solidarity principle, the ethical responsibilities that different stakeholders should assume are put forward, providing scientific and rational suggestions and countermeasures for ethical governance of epidemic prevention and control.