Covid-19 continues to alter our way of living and dying. Much attention has focused on how to resolve pressing issues surrounding resource allocation and competing public health ethics. While these are important discussions, the legal and ethical dilemmas of treatment decisions remain highly critical. The urgency to ensure that life and death affairs are in order is magnified due to the possibility of becoming infected with Covid-19. However, many people continue to face challenges in organising their future medical care and treatment. This article explores how the pandemic affects advance care planning through the lenses of law and ethics. The range of Covid-19 implications on advance care planning demonstrates a paradigm shift from a primarily elective function to an essential role in healthcare delivery. This renewed appreciation to advance care planning offers the opportunity to support and sustain the important role that it could play during ordinary and extraordinary times.

COVID-19 deeply affects many spheres of life. Lockdown measures implemented worldwide have accentuated mental wellbeing changes in the population from the perspectives of space and social relations. These changes leave lasting imprints on individuals and communities. This article draws upon solidarity and care ethics in exploring their role in rebuilding mental wellbeing in the light of constraints arising from lockdown. The diversity of responses to physical and social isolation during the pandemic illuminates the distinctly relational nature of human beings, offering the opportunity for care and solidarity to respond to mental wellbeing challenges in an inclusive and context-sensitive way.

Organ donation has gained much attention as the need for transplant exceeds the supply of organs. Various proposals have been put forward to address the organ shortage challenge, ranging from offering incentives to donors, addressing family refusals to donations and instituting presumed consent laws. Presumed consent as the favoured approach has not been universally effective in increasing actual transplants despite its appeal. Few considerations have been given to the broader ethical climate influencing the organ donation debate. This paper examines the ethical climate surrounding organ donation and identifies the challenges existing within such environments. It explores care ethics and its application to the donation system, demonstrating how it can influence the organ donation phases. The conclusion drawn from the analysis is that a caring ethical climate in the pre, during and post-transplant system respects donor autonomy, addresses family reluctance to agree to donation, facilitates the needs of the donee and creates an environment that promotes non-maleficence for all stakeholders.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a range of responses from countries across the globe in managing and containing infections. Considerable research has highlighted the importance of trust in ethically and effectively managing infectious diseases in the population; however, considerations of reciprocal trust remain limited in debates on pandemic response. This paper aims to broaden the perspective of good ethical practices in managing an infectious disease outbreak by including the role of reciprocal trust. A synthesis of the approaches drawn from South Korea and Taiwan reveals reciprocal trust as an important ethical response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reciprocal trust offers the opportunity to reconcile the difficulties arising from restrictive measures for protecting population health and individual rights.

The Covid-19 pandemic has precipitated the global race for essential personal protective equipment in delivering critical patient care. This has created a dearth of personal protective equipment availability in some countries, which posed particular harm to frontline healthcare workers' health and safety, with undesirable consequences to public health. Substantial discussions have been devoted to the imperative of providing adequate personal protective equipment to frontline healthcare workers. The specific legal obligations of hospitals towards healthcare workers in the pandemic context have so far escaped important scrutiny. This paper endeavours to examine this overlooked aspect in the light of legal actions brought by frontline healthcare workers against their employers arising from a shortage of personal protective equipment. By analysing the potential legal liabilities of hospitals, the paper sheds light on the interlinked attributes and factors in understanding hospitals' obligations towards healthcare workers and how such duty can be justifiably recalibrated in times of pandemic.