COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 App Updated With Claims Data Reported as of 05/03/2021

Last week CWCI updated the COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 Interactive Claims Data App, including data on claims from March of AY 2019 through April of AY 2021 reported to the DWC’s Workers’ Compensation Information System (WCIS) as of May 3.  Those claims include 144,116 COVID-19 claims reported from January of last year through May 3 of this year (914 of which were death claims).  The claim count for the 14 months ending April 30 shows 715,591 workers’ compensation claims of which 143,872 (20.1%) were COVID-19 claims.  Among other key findings:

• Updated monthly figures show that after peaking at 42,365 claims in December 2020, the number of COVID-19 claims plummeted, with the monthly totals thus far falling to 21,295 in January; 3,842 in February; 1,707 in March; and 752 in April. Additional claims from those months are still being reported, but the pace has slowed and CWCI’s ultimate claim projections also show the sharp decline in the first four months of the year, with the latest estimates showing that the COVID-19 claim count will be 22,277 claims for January; 4,126 for February; 2,014 for March; and 1,316 for April.  If the March and April projections are accurate, COVID-19 claim counts will be well below figures from a year earlier, when the governor first declared the pandemic and ordered non-essential businesses to shut down and non-essential workers to shelter at home.
• COVID-19 claims represented 18.0% of all California workers’ compensation claims reported last year and 18.1% of the projected total for the year. The percentage peaked at 53.1% in December, but then declined to 36.4% in January 2021, 9.1% in February, 3.8% in March, and 2.6% in April.

• The mix of claims by industry shifted in the past 3 months.  Health care workers accounted for the largest share of COVID claims throughout 2020, including during the November-January surge when they represented 29.2% of all COVID-19 claims, but as COVID claim volume plunged from February through April, public safety/government workers surpassed health care workers, as their share of the COVID claims went from 18.7% to 21.7% while the health care workers’ share fell from 29.2% to 19.6%.  Other sectors that saw their share of COVID claims increase over that same period: retail, which rose from 11.8% to 13.8% of the COVID claims; transportation, which went from 7.4% to 9.4%; education, which went from 1.6% to 2.7%; arts and recreation, which rose from 0.6% to 1.4%; and real estate, which went from 0.8% to 1.4%.     
• The class code detail within the app allows users to compare claims from a given industry and a specific pandemic period against claims from that same industry during the comparable pre-pandemic period (12 months earlier).  Here, for example, the app shows that within the Transportation sector, workers’ comp claims filed by parcel delivery/messenger service workers accounted for 54.5% of all Transportation sector claims in November and December of 2020, versus 23.6% of the Transportation sector claims a year earlier, during the pre-pandemic period.
• Although COVID-19 claim volume was down sharply in February 2021, the denial rate for February COVID claims rose to 39.6%, the highest level since March of 2020, during the very early stages of the pandemic.  Denial rates continued to vary sharply by industry in February, with government/public safety (14.4%) and health care workers (23.2%), many of whom have COVID-19 presumptions, having the lowest denial rates, while the highest COVID-19 claim denial rates were in the retail; agriculture; and transportation sectors, all of which accounted for an increased share of the COVID-19 claims in February. 
• The regional distribution of COVID-19 claims in California also shifted between the November – January surge (the 3 highest volume months of the pandemic for COVID-19 claims) and the 3 months spanning February – April of 2021, when COVID claim counts plummeted.  The table below shows the change in the regional distribution of COVID-19 claims between those two 3-month periods. 

Regional Distribution of Calif WC COVID-19 Claims (Nov 2020 – Jan 2021 vs. Feb 2021 – Apr 2021)

As noted, L.A. County, which was the epicenter for COVID-19 claims for much of 2020, accounted for 28.4% of the COVID-19 claims as volume soared from November 2020 – January 2021, closely followed by the Inland Empire/Orange County which had 27.5% of the COVID claims during the surge, but L.A. County’s share dropped to 18.7% from February – April, while the Inland Empire/Orange County dropped to 19.3%.  In contrast, the Central Valley has been the #1 region for COVID claims in the state since February, as that region’s share of the COVID-19 claims climbed from 17.0% during the November – January surge to 26.2% from February – April.  The Bay Area also saw its share of COVID claims jump sharply as statewide claim volume declined, as it went from 12.1% of the November – January claims to 17.5% of the February – April claims.

• Notification lags on COVID-19 claims continue to improve but remain longer than those for non-COVID claims. For example, among January 2021 claims, COVID-19 claims averaged 5.0 days from injury date to employer notice, and 7.8 days from employer notice to claims administrator notice, for an average of 12.8 days from the date of injury to the claims administrator notice.  On the other hand, non-COVID claims averaged 4.1 days from injury date to employer notice, and 5.3 days from employer notice to claims administrator notice, for an average of 9.4 days from injury date to claims administrator notice.  

The COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 Interactive Data App is updated biweekly and the next update will be on May 17.

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