Hospital worker did not suffer permanently following COVID: high court

The Supreme Court of West Virginia on Wednesday agreed that a hospital worker who filed a compensable COVID-19 claim failed to prove she suffered permanent lung damage and is thus not eligible for permanent disability.

As documented in Brenda G. Blevins v. Princeton Community Hospital Association, the state’s Intermediate Court of Appeals in January ruled Ms. Blevins, who had suffered previous lung conditions and was on pulmonary medication before the pandemic, failed to connect her 2020 COVID-19 infection to permanent damage. This decision affirmed a 2024 ruling by the Workers’ Compensation Board of Review, which affirmed the claim administrator’s order from 2022.
On appeal, Ms. Blevins argued that the Intermediate Court of Appeals was “clearly wrong” in agreeing she failed to “prove by a preponderance of the evidence that she sustained any whole-person impairment from the compensable injury.”

She argued that her doctor connected her continued treatment to the compensable COVID infection and provided a “statement that such treatment and diagnoses were related to the claimant’s compensable post-COVID syndrome.”

She asserted that her doctor “described in detail that the claimant began having her current symptoms of severe shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sleep apnea, autoimmune syndrome, joint pain, and other symptoms following her COVID infection, which contributed to 3% whole-person impairment.”

The employer argued “that there is no objective evidence that the claimant suffered any permanent impairment as a result of COVID or post-COVID syndrome,” pointing to her previous lung condition and diagnostic tests that showed no pulmonary issues.

The state’s highest court said it found “no reversible error” in the appellate court’s finding that compensable COVID did not lead to a permanent injury.