The Data Governance Act and the EU's move towards facilitating data sharing.

The implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has had significant impacts on biomedical research, often complicating data sharing among researchers. The recently announced proposal for a new EU Data Governance Act is a promising step towards facilitating data sharing, if it can interplay well with the GDPR.

Reporting, recording, and communication of COVID-19 cases in workplace: data protection as a moving target.

In response to concerns related to privacy in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), recently European and national Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) issued guidelines and recommendations addressing a variety of issues related to the processing of personal data for preventive purposes. One of the recurring questions in these guidelines is related to the rights and responsibilities of employers and employees in reporting, recording, and communicating COVID-19 cases in workplace. National DPAs in some cases adopted different approaches regarding duties in reporting and communicating the COVID-19 cases; however, they unanimously stressed the importance of adopting privacy-preserving approaches to avoid raising concerns about surveillance and stigmatization. We stress that in view of the increasing use of new data collection and sharing tools such as 'tracing and warning' apps, the associated privacy-related risks should be evaluated on an ongoing manner. In addition, the intricacies of different settings where such apps may be used should be taken into consideration when assessing the associated risks and benefits.