New York’s workers’ compensation system provided only limited support to essential workers affected by COVID-19, according to an abstract of a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Researchers analyzed COVID-19 claims from nursing home workers and compared them to registered nursing home staff’s COVID-19 infections and deaths reported to the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2020 and 2021.
The analysis reportedly found that 21.9% of 29,814 COVID-19 claims were awarded benefits, despite 86.8% of claimants working in key industries. Study authors said 1.4% of 46,505 COVID-19 infections recorded by CMS resulted in a claim, and 7.2% of the 1
11 deaths recorded by CMS received death benefits.The authors concluded that New York’s workers’ comp program “has provided very modest support to essential workers for the likely work-related burden of the pandemic in NYS.”
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