From the New York Times:
Since she tested positive for the coronavirus in April 2020, Josie Cabrera Taveras has found herself sleeping for up to 15 hours a day, stopping in grocery store aisles to catch her breath, lapsing in and out of consciousness and unable to return to her job as a nanny.
She believes that she is one of thousands, possibly millions, of Americans who may have a condition known as “long Covid.” The Biden administration has said people with the condition could qualify for federal disability protections and benefits, which can include health care, housing and unemployment benefits.
But like many others who may have long Covid, Ms. Taveras, 31, has had a hard time proving it. ...
With no direct medical evidence of her condition, she has been turned down for disability coverage twice. Even a note from a prestigious post-Covid clinic in the Mount Sinai hospital system, attesting that Ms. Taveras “continues to experience daily symptoms and is currently unable to work,” was not enough. ...
Since December 2020, the Social Security Administration has determined that about 16,000 applicants were able to provide medical evidence supporting Covid-19 as one of their impairments, according to Nicole Tiggemann, a spokeswoman for the agency, which was not flagging Covid cases before that.
But she would not say how many of those 16,000 applicants had been approved for benefits, or how many people claiming long Covid as a condition had been denied. Many cases are probably still pending; wait times for a determination can stretch for five months or more. ...
Steven Trompeter, 49, was unable to perform his job as an industrial mechanic after getting sick with Covid symptoms, including cough, fever, muscle aches and loss of taste and smell, in February 2020. He applied for disability in December 2020 and was approved six months later. ...
I'm glad Mr. Trompter got approved but surprised that he would have been approved based solely on long Covid. Maybe there are other health problems involved in his case.
I'm not seeing any groundswell of long Covid cases. So far, I've got one such case and it could easily be described as a post-ICU syndrome case, an entity that was well known before Covid. I'm not hearing about many long Covid cases from other attorneys.
3 comments:
Do you think we will see more approvals for Long Covid once enough time has passed for some of these cases to start having ALJ hearings? I would imagine they'd have far better luck at that point than at the initial/reconsideration stages.
Have not had any claimants alleging long COVID during hearings yet. And the cases I hear now have initial application dates of late 2020 to early 2021, well after the first wave of COVID cases.
They will have to adapt to a worldwide pandemic whether they want to or not. It will be a problem that will continue to get worse. However, as we all know, the government (especially SSA) works on it's own time. Hopefully it won't be years.
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