SOCIAL IMPACT OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES EMPLOYED BY COUNTRIES IN THE WAKE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Near the end of 2019, several worrying cases of pneumonia sprung up in Hubei province, China. Doctors immediately started investigating the novel cases of unknown etiology and notified the local CDC. Soon after, Chinese authorities informed the WHO which alarmed all other countries. The culprit for these novel cases of pneumonia was found to be a coronavirus classified as SARS-CoV-2. In just three months, the virus managed to spread across most of the world’s countries and the outbreak was officially classified as a pandemic. Therefore, each country had to form a plan of actions and measures serving to curtail the spread of the virus. Most countries leveraged digital technologies in their quest to flatten the curve. However, some implementations of digital technology heavily infiltrated into the area of personal privacy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to give some notable examples of country-specific measures and analyse their ethical and societal impact