Essential government workers in Maryland diagnosed with long COVID would be presumed to have a compensable occupational disease, under a bill introduced in the state Senate on Friday.
S.B. 431, which was referred to the Senate Finance Committee, would create a presumption for essential workers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 5, 2020, and July 15, 2021, and who subsequently were diagnosed with long COVID.
The bill defines long COVID to mean lingering symptoms or conditions that continue or develop at least four weeks after an initial infection and may be multisystemic, present with a relapsing-remitting pattern and may “represent many potentially overlapping entities, likely with different biological causes and different sets of risk factors and outcomes.”
The presumption would apply to government workers who couldn’t work remotely during the pandemic.
State governmental employers could rebut the presumption with substantial evidence demonstrating that a worker did not contract COVID-19 or develop long COVID in the course of employment, according to the bill.
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