COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 App Updated With Claims Data Reported as of 12/28/2020

CWCI has updated our COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 Interactive Data App, which now features data from 1,180,500 claims from AY 2019 and AY 2020, recorded by DWC’s Workers’ Compensation Information System (WCIS) as of December 28.  That total includes 68,467 COVID-19 claims reported through the first 11 months of 2020.  As of December 28, WCIS had recorded 540,853 workers’ comp claims with January through November 2020 injury dates which, despite the addition of the COVID-19 claims, is down 15.4% from the 639,647 claims reported for the first 11 months of AY 2019, though only 10.4% less than the total claim count projected by the Institute after applying claim development factors to account for the reporting time lags on COVID-19 claims.  Among other key findings in the latest app:

• The monthly COVID-19 claim count peaked at 15,034 claims in July, then fell sharply to 6,559 claims in August and 4,284 claims in September, before rebounding to 4,754 claims in October and 13,181 claims in November as the number of coronavirus cases statewide surged.  CWCI projects the COVID-19 claim count for November will ultimately hit a record 17,531 claims.
• COVID-19 claims as a percentage of all California workers’ comp claims hit a record 27.7%         in November.  For the first 11 months of 2020, COVID-19 claims accounted for 12.7% of all claims.
• The denial rate for October COVID-19 claims rose to 35.9%, the highest level since March when there were far fewer claims (denial data for November claims is still not fully developed.)  Denial rates vary sharply by industry (e.g., 2/3 of the October COVID-19 claims by transportation workers were denied vs. less than 1/4 of October COVID-19 claims from health care workers.   
• As of December 28, the WCIS had recorded 381 COVID-19 death claims for AY 2020.  As a frame of reference, there was a total of 748 California workers’ comp death claims in 2019.     
• Los Angeles County leads the state with 18,071 COVID-19 claims (26.6% of the statewide total), but the highest incidence of COVID-19 claims has been in Imperial County, where there have been 200.2 COVID-19 claims per 100,000 employees.
• Workers under the age of 30 have accounted for 26.8% of the AY 2020 COVID-19 claims, while 26.7% of COVID-19 claims have involved 30- to 39-year olds; 21.7% have involved 40- to 49-year olds; 17.0% have involved 50- to 59-year olds; and 7.7% have involved workers 60 or older.
• Notification lags on COVID-19 claims have improved but remain longer than those for non-COVID claims.  For example, among October claims, COVID-19 claims averaged 4.2 days from injury date to employer notice, and 6.2 days from employer notice to claims administrator notice, for an average of 10.4 days from the injury date to claims administrator notice.  In contrast, non-COVID claims from October averaged 2.6 days from injury date to employer notice, and 4.2 days from employer notice to claims administrator notice, for an average of 6.4 days from injury date to claims administrator notice.  

The COVID-19/Non-COVID-19 Interactive Data App is updated biweekly and the latest version can be accessed by CWCI members and the public by clicking here.

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