O This work proposes to investigate the fundamental right to access information and its legal and social effectiveness in the global context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reference is made to the Brazilian context in which it would be enshrined as an increased right to control and optimise the public machinery and its actions. In the face of the threats of the novel coronavirus, the fundamental right to access information is exploited from the perspective of promoting individual self-determination. To this end, a review of the theory of fundamental rights is undertaken, but also empirical research into the Hodierna environment based on data and studies made available in the digital environment. Thus, the effective optimisation of the right to information is essential for the protection of other fundamental rights, such as health, safety, freedom and life, especially in the face of the uncertainties of the pandemic. Through academic and documentary research, using comparative analysis of normative treatments and the deductivity-inductive method, reflections have been highlighted on the various legal issues caused by epistemological cutting, in particular as regards the ways in which human dignity can be realised and the individual and collective self-determination is safeguarded by access to information and its essential elements: communication and knowledge.