Expansion of Workers’ Comp for COVID-19 Created Narrow Benefit in 6 States While at least 17 states have passed laws or issued orders that expanded access to workers’ compensation benefits for employees who contract COVID-19, many of those directives are creating new exposure for only a sliver of the workforce, new research by the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute shows. WCRI studied policies adopted by Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota and Missouri in response to the pandemic. Researchers found that the broadest expansion of the six states — an executive order issued by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear — created additional claim exposure for only 4% of the state’s workers, when adjusted to account for the risk of exposure. The orders expanded exposure by more than 3% but less than 4% of workers in each of the other states except for two states – Minnesota, at 2.8% and Missouri, at 0.8%.