Labor and social law in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic: problems of theory and practice

Abstract

High occupational risk of damage to the health of medical workers requires the adoption of special measures for social protection. Such measures in the form of a one-time insurance payment were provided for by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 313, adopted in the midst of a new coronavirus infection COVID-19. During the implementation of the provisions of this Decree, law enforcement officers faced a number of problems caused by both the complexity of regulated relations and imperfection of the text of the regulatory legal act itself. Such problems include the lack of clear legal regulation of ways to establish the connection of a medical worker’s illness with direct contact with a patient suffering from COVID-19, or with suspicion of this disease, the difficulty of establishing a connection be-tween the performance of work duties with the fact of infection, insufficient specification of the circle of subjects entitled to this payment, a complex procedure, etc. Since the Decree is temporary, it is advisable to identify these problems and find ways to eliminate them before relevant federal law is adopted. In this regard, it is necessary to analyze emerging judicial prac-tice, which is the aim of this article. The analysis reveals what exactly the courts accept as evi-dence of the professional cause of infection of doctors and how they distinguish between the industrial and domestic cause of infection; how is the impossibility of applying the provisions of the Decree to persons not included in the circle of insured persons specified in it justified; what can be considered as such violations of the procedure that entail the cancellation of the decision of the commission of inquiry, etc. On this basis, conclusions are drawn that will help to avoid mistakes when adopting the federal law on insurance of medical workers.