FOUNDATIONAL MORAL PRINCIPLES
1.  Human life, health, and dignity—All persons should continue to be treated with dignity and respect; due care should be offered to all even when recovery is not feasible.
2.  Duty to care—Health care professionals should not abandon their roles on the basis of elevated risks in a time of crisis, provided their continued service does not compromise a higher or more fundamental duty.
3.  Common good—Unreasonable demands of individuals need not always be heeded, while the proper interest in promoting the common good must not compromise the dignity of individuals.
4.  Prudential certitude—Limitations on time, staff, resources, and space have an objective impact on what is demanded of health care providers in crisis situations: the duty is not to absolute certitude of outcomes, but to the best clinical assessments (including prognoses and mortality expectations) under the constraints of the circumstances.
5.  Proportionality of care standards—The measures and duration of any crisis standards of care, including triage protocols, should be limited in time and scope to what is strictly necessary for overcoming the crisis situation. They should not begin early or last beyond the needed time, and they should not be more restrictive than necessary to justly and charitably respond to the need.
6.  Therapeutic proportionality—Treatments with burdens that outweigh benefits can be legitimately declined by patients; treatments that offer no reasonable hope of benefit can be legitimately withheld or withdrawn by a health care provider when failing to do so would gravely compromise the health or lives of others.
7.  Subsidiarity—Decisions about care should be at the local level, between caregivers and patients, as much as possible in a crisis situation; however, some aspects may legitimately shift to higher levels such as triage committees if they cannot be charitably and justly handled at that local level.
8.  Responsible stewardship—Health care providers must justly and prudently manage the health care resources available to them, first by increasing those resources and then by judiciously employing those resources to best serve the common good while respecting the dignity of each patient. This may mean that patients who would otherwise have access to certain resources and care levels in a non-crisis situation may be unable to access them under a triage protocol.
9.  Justice and objectivity—There must be no unjust discrimination on the basis of age, disability, cognitive function, quality of life, stage of life, or other value-laden or utilitarian criteria reaching beyond short-term clinical prospects of recovery or mortality and certain limited, unbiased, nonclinical criteria when clinical situations are equivalent.
10.  Charity and solidarity—Pastoral and spiritual care should be made available and prioritized, given that the highest good of the human person is spiritual and that death and suffering are times of enormous spiritual significance; some patients may wish to sacrifice their just access to treatment in order to help save others.