Illinois expands workers’ compensation rule for essential employees potentially affected by COVID-19

Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration has unveiled an emergency rule to allow essential employees, including nurses, first responders and paramedics, to receive workers’ compensation if they contract COVID-19.

Under the rule, essential employees who apply for workers’ compensation as a result of contracting COVID-19 will be “rebuttably presumed” to have contracted the virus through their employment.

“My intention is to protect the workers of Illinois, the people who are most affected by COVID-19,” Pritzker said. “We are in a pandemic… this is what we need to do right now to protect people.”

Illinois Nurses Association Executive Director Alice Johnson, who joined Pritzker during Monday’s press conference, praised the new rule.

“Due to this change, there will now be a fair and reasonable presumption that a nurse who becomes infected with COVID-19 during this crisis became infected on the job, which will then ensure that she receives the workers’ compensation benefits they rightly deserved,” she said.

Pritzker also outlined additional steps Monday to expand access and availability to unemployment benefits, such as improving the Illinois Department of Employment Security’s website to handle additional traffic and expanding call center capacity.

Pritzker’s press conference on Monday came several hours after House Republican leaders held a teleconference critical of the department’s handling of the surge in unemployment claims, which officials said has now reached half a million Illinoisans.

“(If) the state of Illinois was able, through the stroke of a pen, to shut down private businesses, which we did, the administration should be able to work through quickly under the emergency powers which the governor has exercised with labor agreements to reposition state employees from other agencies to the Department of Employment Security for a temporary period of time,” said House Republican Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs.

Pritzker stressed his administration has been taking steps since the beginning of the pandemic to upgrade the department’s system to handle the rise in unemployment claims.

Officials reported 74 more deaths on Monday, bringing the state’s total to 794. Additionally, 1,173 new cases were reported Monday, bringing the state’s total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 22,025 in 87 counties.

There have been 105,768 tests.

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