Infracțiunea de zădărnicire a combaterii bolilor, în contextul pandemiei de SARS-Cov2
Crime of Preventing Disease Control in the Context of the SARS-Cov2 Pandemic

Summary/Abstract: Public health and human rights are usually advanced arguments against criminalizing individual behavior that risks transmitting disease. These public health arguments are primarily utilitarian, criminalization is unlikely to discourage risky behaviors, or at least discourage such behaviors more than other incentives would discourage. Also in this context, and with regard to public health but also to the fundamental right to health, the issue has arisen that criminalization may in fact increase the risks. Thus, the incrimination applies to people who know they are infected, but may also discourage testing to find out if they are infected or not. Another factor to consider is that of prevention. In this case, the incrimination occurs after the occurrence of risky behavior, too late from the perspective of prevention. From the point of view of legislative technique, such conduct can be sanctioned by reference to a general rule (for example, the act of one person infecting another, with the effect of his death, can be qualified as a crime against life, by reference to one of the existing rules, such as murder or culpable homicide). But the conscious act of exposing other people to contagious diseases is detrimental to the public interest. This is the orientation of the Romanian legislator when he incriminated the crime of thwarting the fight against diseases.

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