Currently ACC is treating Covid caught at work as a potential workplace injury under Sec 30 of the Act. We did an Official Information Act request last year with lockdown and at that stage there were 8 Covid claims attributed to employers.
This means that any days-off (longer than 7 days) the worker is actually entitled to ACC weekly compensation. Interestingly this would mean the employer has to pay the first week at 80%.
Being a workplace claim, any days-off on weekly compensation will impact the employers Experience Rating.
We understand that Covid caught at work is a workplace incident under the Health part of health and safety. The employer has a series of duties to protect their workers like any other risk in the business.
So technically, if a worker catches Covid at their employment and subsequently passes away because of Covid, is this now a Workplace fatality?
What I do not yet understand and welcome insights on is where is the balance between individual privacy (i.e. asking who is vaccinated as that is possibly the best control we have) versus the need to manage the risk under the Health & Safety at Work Act?
What this is about is navigating the potentially very muddy waters of different sets of legislation.
I can see this becoming a bit of bother once vaccination rates go up.
