The Impact of COVID-19 on the Romanian Criminal Law. The Main Changes in the Legal Content of the Futility of Combating Diseases Offense

• Author: Ana Alina Ionescu Dumitrache
• Position: Senior Lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Law, Danubius University of Galati, Romania
• Pages: 113-121

ISSN: 2067 – 9211 Legal Sciences in the New Millennium

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The Impact of COVID-19 on the Romanian Criminal Law. The Main

Changes in the Legal Content of the Futility of Combating Diseases Offense

Ana Alina Ionescu Dumitrache1

Abstract: In this article we aim at highlighting the main changes that have occurred in the architecture of

crimes against public health as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the scientific endeavor aims at

highlighting the intervention of the Romanian criminal legislator in the sense of reconfiguring the legal content

of the crime to prevent diseases in the context imposed by the state of emergency demanded by the COVID-19

pandemic. We will analyze the changes and completions made in the matter of art. 352 of the Criminal Code

through the Emergency Ordinance no. 28/2020 for amending and supplementing Law no. 286/2009 regarding

the Criminal Code, this crime being considered to be particularly serious in the dramatic panorama created by

COVID-19, which can seriously endanger important social values such as life and health.

Keywords: public health; COVID-19 pandemic; Criminal Code

1. Introductory Aspects

The COVID-19 pandemic created the context of the Romanian legislator's intervention on some articles

of the Romanian Criminal Code, in order to defend, through criminal norms, the social value of public

health, threatened by the rapid spread of this new type of virus.

In the present scientific article, we will highlight the changes in the criminal legislation, in the legal

content of art. 352 of the Criminal Code – futility of combating diseases.

Thus, according to the Emergency Ordinance 28/2020 for the amendment and completion of Law no.

286/2009 regarding the Criminal Code2, the text of art. 352 of Criminal Code is amended as follows:

Art. 352. The futility of combating diseases:

“(1) Failure to comply with the quarantine or hospitalization measures ordered for the prevention or

control of infectious diseases shall be punished by imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years or by a fine.

(2) Failure to comply with the measures regarding the prevention or control of infectious diseases, if

the deed resulted in the spread of such a disease, shall be punished by imprisonment from one to 5 years.

(3) The transmission, by any means, of an infectious disease by a person who knows that he suffers from

this disease shall be punished by imprisonment from 2 to 7 years and the prohibition of the exercise of

certain rights.

1 Senior Lecturer, PhD, Faculty of Law, Danubius University of Galati, Romania, Address: 3 Galati Blvd., Galati 800654,

Romania, Tel.: +40372361102, Corresponding author: soosalina@univ-danubius.ro.

2 Published in Official Monitor no 228 of March 20, 2020.