【Aging, safety net and fiscal crisis in Japan】No.283: COVID-19 and occupational accident insurance

Interest in occupational accident insurance is increasing as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak; in particular, this increase is due to clusters in hospitals, long-term care/welfare facilities, and restaurants, among other places. As mentioned in Column No.125, this is a system that gives the necessary benefits to support workers and bereaved families affected by injuries, illness, or accidental death at work or while commuting. Since the benefits of occupational accident insurance are more generous than those of health insurance (Table 1), determining whether a worker infected with COVID-19 receives benefits from occupational accident insurance or health insurance is an important issue.

Due to the generous benefits, occupational accident insurance has stricter policies on proving that the cause of the illness or injury was at work. However, in the case of COVID-19, even if a person working in a hospital or long-term care/welfare facility is infected, there is a possibility that the person was infected in a place other than the workplace, and it is difficult to prove the causal relationship of infection with 100% certainty. To help tackle the pandemic, the government decided to extend the occupational accident insurance coverage to people that are infected with COVID-19, unless it is clear that they were infected outside the workplace. As shown in Table 2, the approval rates for the hospital/clinic and long-term care/welfare facility are 55.9% and 50.0, respectively, which are higher than other workplaces (that stand at 39.3%).


Table 1 Comparison between Health Insurance and Occupational Accident Insurance

Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare


Table 2 Number of COVID-19 infected workers who applied for Occupational Accident Insurance benefits (as of September 14th)

Source: Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare