The Effect of Covid-19 Pandemic on Personal Health Data in Terms of European Union Law and Turkish Law

Abstract

As epidemics in the history of humanity are experienced in the age of technology, the solutions that humanity has found in order to prevent the spread of diseases have started to change. This new state of humanity, which has started to conduct its relations through mobile applications, is also trying to protect their health with these applications. Mobile tracking applications, which entered our lives with the Covid-19 pandemic, have brought a new approach to the transmission of the disease, necessitating the need to re-discuss two sometimes conflicting concepts such as privacy and public health. In addition to the complementarity of the relations between the individual and the public, the need to keep them in balance has gained a new dimension with the pandemic. The mobile tracking applications, which started to be used to prevent the spread of the epidemic, were examined by comparing them with the European Union law and Turkish law regulations, and the perspectives of the laws on the autonomy and privacy of individuals based on personal data were evaluated when it comes to public health. Because even though mobile tracking applications have entered our lives due to the pandemic, the doors to the possibilities of finding a place for them in other areas have been opened from now on.

Keywords

• personal data
• covid-19; tracking applications