Журнал. World association for medical law. The COVID-19 pandemic. Volume 39 2

226 Medicine and Law COVID–19 caused a public health crisis with medical and ethical ramifications: it rewrote manuals of clinical treatment and brought a new condition with prognoses and symptoms with which physicians remain unfamiliar. Despite the above, the Israeli health system did not make adequate preparations to diagnose and handle the current pandemic and its economic outcome. There is a shift from globalization and free trade to countries’ national debates concerning health v. economy that questions the influence of patients’ rights and the right to autonomy pre and post-advent of the vaccine. Keywords: Pandemic; Public Health; Tests; Medical Dilemmas; Research; Treatment; Medical Directives Vaccinations; Ethical Ramifications; Human Rights; Public Interests Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic poses the most significant health challenge since the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 and is the most influential economic incident since the 1929 Global Financial Crisis. Israel has a solid health system that provides basic health services to all its citizens independent of their income, race or religion and more advanced private health services through private insurance provided by the health maintenance organization (HMO) funds. The population of Israel is to date 9 million citizens, a mostly young population which helped overcome the COVID-19 pandemic with very low numbers of casualties between mid- March and Mid-May of 2020. The significant economic effects have occurred and do currently still stand. This article will analyze the future legal and ethical ramifications of the COVID–19 on patient rights post-pandemic. The present Corona pandemic (unlike other historical pandemics) is characterized by its extent and speed at which it spreads. This can be attributed to scientific developments in the era of globalization and freedom of information. It still seems that the complete data, resulting from the corona virus (the number of confirmed patients, the infections, those on ventilators and the number of deaths) relative to the size of the population, is perhaps less devastating when compared to historical pandemics. Its long term implications and the indirect damage to the future are more substantial than what could have been anticipated.