Responsibility and risks: key concepts in the ethical debate generated by COVID-19

Foundation: concepts such as responsibility, risks and risk perception are of singular importance in today's conditions in which the COVID-19 pandemic generates deep ethical debates.Objective: to argue, from the contributions of the social sciences, the concepts of risk and responsibility present in the ethical debate raised by COVID-19.Methods: from the qualitative methodology, it is a theoretical study that assumes the general research methods. As a technique, the content analysis of the documents and the referenced bibliography were used.Results: the concepts of responsibility and risks are used recurrently today in scientific discourse, in daily life and in debates taking place from the media, hence the need for their theoretical deepening.Conclusions: the presentation of two authors who support the conceptualizations of risk and social responsibility contributes from the theoretical point of view to a better understanding and social action in the environment where conditioning factors generated by the COVID-19 pandemic occur.