COVID-19 pandemic and balance of constitutional rights

ABSTRACT: In 2020 the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 to be a pandemic. Governments around the world are facing a tough challenge that could jeopardise the national healthcare systems. Safeguarding the rights of Covid patients and all citizens - especially those who are now even more vulnerable than they were before - is part of this challenge. This work aims to examine the issues arising from the current emergency in terms of how individuals' constitutional rights have been balanced and how much people at the highest risk amid this pandemic - the homeless, the inmates in prison, geriatric and psychiatric patients, and doctors on the Covid frontline - have been protected. This analysis focuses mostly on one of the worst-hit countries by the SARS-CoV-2: Italy.