Canadian HR Reporter

N E W S 8 www.hrreporter.com For COVID 'long-haulers,' expect disability claims, accommodation requests The symptoms, including fatigue, muscle pain and "brain fog," can make it very hard to work. And they can last months after an infection, so people with "long COVID" could prove a challenge for employers, says Sarah Dobson COVID-19 affects people in ver y unusual and different ways. And when it comes to post-COVID symptoms or "long COVID," it's "more of a medical uncertainty than anything else," says Daniel Lublin, a partner at Whitten & Lublin in Toronto. For that reason, employers could face challenges when it comes to the esti- mated one-third of employees who test positive for the virus but continue to suffer long after the diagnosis. limits their cognitive impairment. And other people have described a general fatigue that never seems to go away, very similar to chronic fatigue syndrome." The biggest complaint is fatigue, but the symptoms can really vary from person to person, judging by anecdotal reports, says Alex Lucifero, managing partner at Samfiru Tumarkin in Ottawa. "Some people have breathing issues; some people… it's been more of a kind of lethargy and a fatigue, meaning that even if they wanted to, they're simply not able to put in the same kind of work… even if it's sitting on a computer working from home, they just can't make it through an entire day." Limited science challenges treatment The challenge is identifying whether there's a medical basis to say that people reporting these symptoms are COVID long haulers, and whether the restric- tions they have prevent them from performing the essential conditions of their job, says Lublin. "It can be very ambiguous and difficult for an employer, employee and insurer to ascertain whether the symptoms are reasonably preventing someone from performing their job or not because there is so little known about COVID long-haul symptoms at this stage." "Where the issues become a legal dispute between the employer and the employee is where there's no disability insurance in place or where someone doesn't qualify for disability insurance, and then they're saying, 'Hey, I'm not capable of returning to work.' And the employer is saying, 'Well, I don't have enough medical information or medical evidence to justify that,'" says Lublin. "There's a space that people fall in where they're in between medical disability coverage but they're not quite ready to return to work. And those are where some of the disputes will arise." Common symptoms When it comes to the symptoms experi- enced by "long-haulers," the most common are fatigue (80 per cent), respiratory complaints (59 per cent) and neurologic complaints (59 per cent), according to a recent survey from the Mayo Clinic. A separate study by the Indiana University School of Medicine found other top complaints include muscle or body aches, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, head- aches and difficulty sleeping. Some people may wake up six months after a bout with COVID and not be able to hear anymore, says Lublin. "Other people have had it described as having an ongoing brain fog, which The issue is very similar to when chronic fatigue syndrome or Fibromyalgia first gained attention, in that insurers and employers didn't have a very good under- standing of where they fit on the diag- nostic spectrum of a medical illness, he says. "Right now, it's just described as 'COVID long haul,' but at some point there's going to probably be a better medical phrase for it to describe people suffering, and employers will have to accept and accommodate that." With so little data, we're learning as we go in terms of what individuals need, whether it's from a treatment perspec- tive or a workplace perspective, to support them in their recovery, says Lisa Paterson, director of pre-claim preven- tion at the Disability Management Institute in Vancouver. "It's an invisible type of illness, and there are certainly challenges associated with that, when it's not a broken leg and it's not as easy to measure the impact, as well as to measure people's progress as they're recovering." Accommodation considerations Accommodating long COVID would be similar to any other kind of accommoda- tion request from someone who says they have a mental illness or a physical COVID SYMPTOMS COMMON THREE MONTHS LATER Source: The Mayo Clinic 80% Percentage of patients who reported fatigue as a symptom 59% Percentage of patients who reported respiratory complaints 59% Percentage of patients who reported neurologic complaints 1 in 3 Number of patients who returned to unrestricted work duty

• Cover