Insurance for COVID-19, and what are your options?

Firstly, there is no specific insurance cover for COVID-19 but the medical conditions or health complications it may cause you, could be covered and it will depend on the type of cover you have and the conditions that are caused by COVID-19.

Let’s look at a couple of scenarios

Scenario 1

If you had income protection and were unable to work because you were sick, then you could be eligible to claim on your income protection policy whether the COVID-19 virus caused it or not.  Your policy wording maybe something like “unable to work for more than 10 hours per week due to sickness or accident”.

So regardless of whether it was COVID-19, Income Protection does not usually specify what type of sickness, only that you are sick and unable to work, so there is no specific Insurance for COVID-19.

Scenario 2

If you had private medical insurance, and you contracted COVID-19.  In our current state of lockdown, you would be quarantined and placed in the public health system anyway, so private medical insurance may not be needed in this time.

However, using an example that you had COVID-19 and 12 months later, you discovered that you had lung complications that derived from CODVID-19 that required medical treatment.

In this case, you may be eligible to claim from your private health insurance because you had private medical insurance before COVID-19, so in this case, the condition it created could be covered.

Is there specific cover for COVID-19

There is no specific cover for COVID-19 but if you had insurance before COVID-19 then under your usual policy benefits COVID-19 and any conditions that are caused by or traceable to COVID-19 would not be excluded.

If you are taking out new insurance cover, then COVID-19 or any conditions caused by or traceable to COVID-19 will most likely be excluded. It is important to understand that the scope of this article is not to give advice; it’s to help you understand where you may stand as far as personal insurance goes and COVID-19.

If you want information about the cover you have, please contact us, and we can assist you with any questions or concerns.