The COVID-19 virus outbreak poses serious challenges to businesses operating globally, including in Europe. In response to the outbreak, governments worldwide are taking increasingly severe measures to fight the pandemic, and companies are implementing measures to ensure business continuity and protect their workforce. As a consequence, companies are contemplating steps which may impact privacy, including, for example, by subjecting employees, suppliers, and visitors to temperature checks, or issuing surveys to understand their workforce and visitors' recent travel and locations.

Such steps may involve the processing of personal information, and sometimes conflict with European data protection law. To clarify these issues, certain European privacy regulators (Supervisory Authorities or SAs) adopted emergency guidance covering COVID-19 related privacy issues. We have prepared FAQs to summarize the key takeaways.