Shuttle Driver Brings Covid Plea To State

Denise Rogers told lawmakers a triple Covid horror story: How it hospitalized her. How it killed her husband. And how the state then turned down her quest to obtain workmen’s compensation benefits to continue to live.

Rogers told that story Wednesday at a virtual joint hearing of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Labor & Insurance Committees.

In the process, she became the human face of a debate over how far to extend protections to workers crushed by Covid-19, beyond medical frontline workers and first responders.

Her state representative, Robyn Porter, asked her to tell her story to other lawmakers and state officials to buttress Porter’s efforts to help victims like Rogers continue to pay the bills and survive in the wake of Covid-19.

Early in the hours-long hearing, Rogers told the committee how she was earning $14 an hour driving a hospital shuttle for the private Propark company in March when she came down with Covid-19. She transported doctors, nurses, and other medical employees all day between Yale New Haven Hospital’s York Street campus and its St. Raphael campus.

Those passengers were among the first exposed to the coronavirus when it hit New Haven in a meaningful way in March. Rogers was in close contact with hundreds of them each day. All passed by her after entering the front door to the shuttle.

She tried to protect herself, she said. Her employer refused to provide masks. ​“I bought my own disinfectant wipes. Lysol spray. But it wasn’t enough.”

She came down with symptoms on March 17. Two days later she went to the emergency room. ​“I was sent home because doctors thought it was asthmatic-related pneumonia,” Rogers recalled.

Her condition worsened. By March 26, as she struggled to breathe, she was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with Covid-19.

She spent two weeks in critical condition. She was released. To this day, she struggles with the effects, under a doctor’s care. ​“I still have shortness of breath. My system has been severely compromised. On some days I’m trying to get my strength. I feel like I’ve been in a war zone,” Rogers said.

“I don’t know when I will be able to go back to work.” (She first told her story in this previous Independent article; at the time she wished to remain anonymous.)

She received her last paycheck on … March 17. No sick time. No disability. She applied for unemployment compensation. Her employer contested the claim, arguing that she probably caught the coronavirus elsewhere. ​“They are wrong,” she said. The state sided with her employer.

The problem lies at least in part with the law: Rogers couldn’t prove which of the hundreds of health care workers she daily transported gave her Covid-19.

On March 26, Rogers’ husband Howard, who works for CT Transit, came down with the coronavirus. He went to the hospital. He never made it out. He died after 48 days. (Read about his death in this previous article.)

Rogers is now struggling not just to regain her health, but to pay her bills. She was on Howard’s insurance plan. To remain on the plan, she needs to come up with $800 a month, she said. She doesn’t know where that money will come from. She needs to come up with $500 to pay the deductible on her $180,000 hospital bill.

“I don’t know how I will pay my bills. I don’t know when I will be able to go back to work,” Rogers said.

With the help of her union, she is appealing the decision to deny her unemployment compensation benefits.

State Rep. Porter (pictured), who represents New Haven and Hamden, said she is looking to help Rogers and others in her situation. She would like Connecticut to follow the lead of 12 other states that have instituted ​“rebuttable presumption” for Covid-19 victims’ workers’ compensation claims. That shifts the burden of proof. It would enable workers like Rogers to be presumed eligible for benefits unless employers can prove they contracted the coronavirus elsewhere.

“We’re continuing to ask Gov. Lamont to issue an executive order immediately due to the urgent and critical nature of these claims,” Porter told the Independent. If that doesn’t happen by the time the legislature meets this summer in special session, ​“I would hope that proposed legislation would be a part of a Covid-19 relief package.”

“Your story is incredibly sad. You have my condolences,” state Workers’ Compensation Commission Chairman Stephen Morelli (pictured) told Rogers when he subsequently spoke at Wednesday’s hearing.

Morelli said 739 Connecticut workers have filed Covid-related compensation claims as of Wednesday. Twenty-nine have resulted in requests for hearings. He encouraged people who feel wrongly denied benefits to request hearings.

Because he personally runs the review board, Morelli said he couldn’t comment Wednesday on any individual cases like Rogers’, in order to preserve his neutrality.

Later in the hearing, Guilford State Rep. Sean Scanlon (pictured) invoked Denise Rogers’ case in questioning a leading state business advocate, Connecticut Business & Industry Association CEO Joe Brennan. Brennan’s group represents employers seeking to hold the line on unemployment compensation costs.

“Where is the line between the doctor and Denise” in terms of who should receive Covid-related benefits? asked Scanlon, the Insurance Committee co-chair. ​“Where is the line for those adjacent to the work that you guys seem to think” should qualify for unemployment compensation?

“It’s a slippery slope,” replied Brennan (pictured). ​“Where do you draw that line? It might leave Denise out. I’m happy to have further discussions on that. If you allow one in, the next is arguable. Then you end up where every manufacturing employee who may have gotten in a grocery store” gets covered.

“It’s very hard to find that line,” Scanlon agreed. ​“The easier thing to do would be to include everybody.”

“Easier. It doesn’t make it good policy,” Brennan said. ​“You’ve got to be very careful to go beyond those frontline workers and first responders. From a policy standpoint, I don’t think that’s a wise choice.”