COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has been designated a global health emergency and pandemic by the World Health Organization. Originating in Wuhan, China in December 2019, the disease has now spread across the globe and continues to spread throughout the United States.

While a majority of cases we have seen to date are relatively mild in terms of symptoms (i.e. fever, cough, shortness of breath), the disease is quite contagious, has caused a number of deaths globally, and is of higher risk to the elderly and individuals with underlying comorbidities.

There is much discussion right now on the impact that COVID-19 (Coronavirus) will have on workers' compensation. Most of this discussion has focused on the potential for claims activity arising from the virus.

The determination of whether a communicable disease is "work-related" is a case-by-case evaluation. The large employers that I work with tend to retain risk on both their workers' compensation and employee benefits programs.

When employees work remotely from home or other locations, the normal rules of course and scope can become complicated and confusing. The same is true of subrogation potential. When the employee is injured in their home, subrogation targets tend to shrivel up and blow away.

Imagine you're a general contractor patrolling the workplace of a construction project and you see a person fall from the scaffolding of a building. The person, an employee of the roofing subcontractor, is injured and sues you for negligence, claiming that you failed to maintain a safe workplace.