Employers across the world are facing extremely difficult challenges in keeping their workplaces safe for their employees, contractors and visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the prevailing instinct is likely to be to protect and to prevent the spread of the virus at all costs, under data protection laws this still needs to be weighed against the privacy rights of employees. Depending on where their employees are located, employers may have to favor privacy over virus detection. This blog sets out a few of the key issues and a snapshot of how they are dealt with across five European jurisdictions (the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands), the US and three Asian jurisdictions (China, Hong Kong and Singapore) as of April 3, 2020. It examines the position under labor and data protection laws without exploration of wider State powers that may be exercised in some jurisdictions.