Covid 19 Delta outbreak: ACC pays out almost $130,000 in Covid claims

Almost $130,000 has been paid out in Accident Compensation Corporation claims for work-related Covid-19 exposure.

As of August 31, ACC had accepted 13 claims - the majority for healthcare workers - which total $122,974, an average of $9459 per claim.

Claims are identified as related to Covid-19 exposure where the injury description is "coronavirus infection" or the accident description includes either "Covid-19" or "coronavirus", and "exposure" or "contracted".

As the accident description is a non-mandatory section of a claim lodgement form, an ACC spokesperson said the data based on this field should be considered indicative only.

ACC has also received hundreds of claims relating to vaccination-related injuries, which spiked in August when New Zealand's Pfizer vaccine rollout was ramping up.

As of August 7, ACC had received 201 treatment injury claims related to the vaccine. Of those, 67 had been accepted, 39 declined and 95 were still being decided.

A month later (September 10), a further 181 claims had been received - a total of 382. Of these, 144 had been accepted, 73 declined and 163 were still being decided.

The majority of accepted claims were for allergic reactions.