The saying, “We’re all in the same boat,” hasn’t necessarily been true of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on workers’ compensation in the US.

The differences in how the coronavirus has reverberated through workers’ comp claims varies between states, and is dependent on a number of factors, according to one expert.

“This is a state-by-state phenomenon, and you can have states that share borders that are having massively different impacts from COVID on the workers’ compensation system,” said Matt Zender, SVP of workers’ compensation strategy at AmTrust Financial Services.

“How the states are opening up the presumption of compensability rules, how the states have handled their shutdown orders – all of those factors have had a very large impact on workers’ compensation.”