High Court Finds Nurse Had Compensable Claim for COVID-19

The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a nurse at a county jail successfully proved that she contracted COVID-19 through employment. The high court reversed the Intermediate Court of Appeals, which held the nurse failed to rebut a study that purported to find health care workers were not at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 on the job and, therefore, failed to prove that her occupational disease came from a hazard she would have been exposed to outside of employment. The court simultaneously rejected the employer’s argument that COVID-19 can never be a compensable occupatio...