Important Caveats

Understandably, this may not be an easy task. ^{Reference Daddoust, Assgary and McBey13} While some laws are already in place that could help rectify bad behaviors—the example of volunteers beating a man is already illegal as it categorizes as an “assault and battery”—it should not matter whether they are volunteers or not, other regulations could be considerably more difficult to develop or deploy. For instance, when volunteers are resident members of the local communities they claim to be supporting, especially when without extensive training or qualifications, do they really have the authority to enforce COVID-19 rules, ranging from masking to quarantining? How strictly should volunteers be punished, if their consequential behaviors, be they unethical or illegal, were a result of misplaced good intentions and trust within the community? What happens if these volunteers are off-duty police officers, who or which departments should supervise or “police” these volunteers then? What restrictions should be in place to ensure that volunteers understand the importance of protecting people’s privacy (eg, individuals’ personal information, regardless of whether they tested positive for COVID-19) or as well as the know-how to securely protect these data? And as more attention focuses on virtual volunteering, ^{Reference Lachance14} what sets of laws and regulations are needed to ensure the sustainable development of this branch of pandemic volunteering?

Who Are Pandemic Volunteers?

Volunteer management has always been an issue in disaster management, especially among spontaneous or “emergent” volunteers. ^{Reference Twigg and Mosel15} To establish clear and constructive guidance that could help volunteer management amid pandemics like COVID-19, one of the key steps that society needs to undertake is to define and differentiate pandemic volunteers from a legal and regulatory perspective. For instance, who should be considered pandemic volunteers? Are people who wear hazmat suits volunteers? And if not, what other mechanisms are in place to help the public identify volunteers from the rest of the population? In other words, how should people differentiate volunteers who intended to help from the “pseudo-volunteers” who might have both their intent and identity hidden under the disguise of head-to-toe hazmat suits? Different from easily identifiable volunteer vests, pandemic volunteers often wear white hazmat suits that cover them from head to toe. While the suits could help protect volunteers from COVID-19 infections, their disposable nature means that oftentimes no displays of identity are attached to these hazmat suits.

This is problematic as hazmat suits are not only used by medical professionals or pandemic volunteers; rather, they are often used by a wide range of people, ranging from civilians to law enforcement personnel. However, while already taxing, the lack of regulation on volunteers’ dress code is only one of the many problems present in post-COVID-19 volunteer management. For instance, even when the intent is clear—pandemic control and prevention, it is debatable as to whether and to what extent hazmat-suit-wearing epidemic control personnel, who could be civilians or police officers, with or without a memorable, if not shocking, criminal or disciplinary record, respectively, should be considered volunteers—people who are often perceived as altruistic, without ulterior motives, and could have access to the most vulnerable members of the society, ranging from children to the cognitively or mentally impaired. Due to the complexity of the issues, it might be difficult to develop effective policy solutions in a timely manner. However, fortunately, not all cost-effective solutions are as time-consuming as the establishment of laws and regulations. Interventions such as training programs, for instance, can oftentimes be developed and deployed swiftly and successfully. ^{Reference Ashcroft, Byrne and Brennan16}