No. 11 - WorkSafeBC has paid out 14 COVID-19-related death claims

WorkSafeBC has paid out 13 death claims related to COVID-19 in 2021. In 2020, that number was just one.

These are COVID-19 deaths where the agency has determined that there was a connection between COVID-19 infection and workplace spread.

While it’s possible, even likely, that some of the 2021 deaths occurred in 2020, this figure offers grim evidence that work continued to be unsafe over the course of the pandemic: rather than getting better at protecting workers, it’s gotten worse.

Claims for workplace injury also climbed: from 1,189 in 2020 to 3465 in 2022.

In Ontario, where 107 COVID-19-related death claims were paid out by WSIB, we know that the highest number of of death-related COVID-19 claims were paid out in manufacturing, followed closely by health care industries. In Alberta, there was a tie among the number of COVID-related death claims paid out to government workers (including health and education, construction and manufacturing: seven each.) While they have this information, WorkSafeBC says that they couldn’t tell me in which industries these 14 deaths occured.

And unlike in other jurisdictions, WorkSafeBC’s 14 deaths are higher than the total number of COVID-19 deaths in BC I’ve tracked since the start of the pandemic. Elsewhere, the number that I track tends to be higher because there isn’t always a confirmed link between workplace and infection. But with my BC data, I have linked nine deaths total (three in healthcare). Where did the other five work?

We can see where COVID-19-related workplace injury has occured per industry, though. This information is publicly available at WorksafeBC’s website. However, as other provinces with more transparent data demonstrate, we can’t assume that deaths mirror higher rates of workplace injury by industry.

What does this all mean for 2022?

Omicron is already doing serious damage to workers. COVID-19 claims in 2022 are far higher than they have been in previous months. From December 2020 to December 2021, an average of 312.5 COVID-19-related workplace health and safety claims were accepted by WorksafeBC per month. The highest month, January 2021, saw 772 successful claims paid out.

So far in 2022, claims are much higher than the previous year. Februrary, the last month for which there is claims information, saw six times more successful claims than the previous 13 months’ average. This doesn’t even mirror last year’s season treands:

As Omicron’s infection to death ratio is different than previous versions of COVID-19, and as the true number of cases in BC is impossible to know because of a lack of access to tests, it’s anyone’s guess how this will translate into the number of COVID-19-related workplace death. But if there are fewer deaths after this wave, it will only be because of the current mutation of the virus: government has all but given up in trying to control the spread of COVID-19.

While I was writing Spin Doctors, a particular John Horgan quote stuck in my head like few others. It was reported by Shannon Waters at British Columbia Today. Horgan was being pressed for not doing enough to control COVID-19 outbreaks at work. It was November 2020. To the criticism, he said, “These clusters are coming from social gatherings … They’re not coming from workplaces, predominantly. If there’s an outbreak in a workplace, it’s because of the social gatherings that led to an employee bringing the virus into that workplace.”

This has stuck in my head because it’s a lie. It was obviously a lie back in 2020 when I was writing the chapter on workplace outbreaks and the chapter on personal responsibility, and it remains a lie today.

I’ve deleted the previous paragraph here citing WorkSafeBC as the part of the sentence that I cited was actually referring to how they decide if cases should be considered related to COVID-19 and not a general comment on infection spread. I misunderstood and regret the error.