The coronavirus pandemic's influence on everyday life

Abstract

Surveillance was not something new in public health domain, it was frequently used to inform disease prevention and control. Not only in public health area, surveillance is an important function in the whole modern society, many scholars proposed the idea of modern surveillance society, in which surveillance embeds into citizens’ every aspect of life. In the midst of COVID-19 outbreak, when quarantine is an important epidemic prevention measure, surveillance simultaneously functions in epidemic prevention and control and monitoring citizens’ life, it is valuable to look at how public health surveillance and the concept of surveillance society interact with each other. Three in-depth interviews and four informal interviews were conducted with local citizens in Yichun city, for the purpose to collect data of public health surveillance (epidemic prevention and control) and state surveillance, including surveillance measures and surveillance technologies. The research findings indicate that with comprehensive and panoptical surveillance measures and surveillance technologies, local communities in Yichun city appear clear characteristics of surveillance society. The research proposes to look at local epidemic prevention and control in an alternative perspective of surveillance. It suggests that further restriction on surveillance should be conducted.