Family of NC nurse who died from COVID seeks Appeals Court’s help

The family of a Wake Forest Baptist Health nurse who died from COVID in 2021 is asking the North Carolina Court of Appeals to revive its pursuit of workers’ compensation.

Amanda Nieft died on July 15, 2021, little more than a month after first showing signs of COVID and less than a month after being hospitalized at Wake Forest Baptist.

Nieft, a direct patient care nurse, had been exposed to COVID while treating a patient for three days in early June 2021, according to an Appeals Court brief filed Monday by Nieft’s husband and daughter.

The hospital’s experts have argued that Nieft likely contracted COVID outside of work. Wake Forest Baptist will have a chance to file its own brief before a three-judge appellate panel addresses Nieft’s case.

Nieft’s family sought workers’ compensation in August 2021. The state Industrial Commission denied the claim in October 2025.

Monday’s brief focused on two items pointing toward an increased COVID risk for workers with Nieft’s job. One involved a federal government standard. The second featured information on the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ website.

“For the first time since it did so with asbestos in 1983, and only the ninth time in history, the United States Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) promulgated an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) in the Federal Register in June 2021,” Nieft’s lawyers wrote. “OSHA took this extraordinary step because of COVID data in the healthcare industry before the ETS’s effective date of 21 June 2021.”

“On 11 June 2021 — ten days before the ETS — Plaintiff Amanda Nieft (Nieft), a direct patient care nurse at Defendant Wake Forest Baptist Hospital (WF-Baptist) who had cared for a COVID-positive patient just a few days before, tested positive for COVID,” the brief continued. “Nieft was later hospitalized and died from it.”

“The ETS addressed ‘[o]ccupational [e]xposure to COVID-19’ among healthcare workers and was published in the Federal Register,” Nieft’s lawyers added. “In the ETS, OSHA determined that healthcare workers — as a general trade, occupation, or employment — were not only at an increased risk for COVID-19 at that time, but that they also were in ‘grave danger’ of contracting COVID-19 at work ‘based on the science of how the virus spreads and the elevated risk in workplaces where COVID-19 patients are cared for.’”

“The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (‘NC DHHS’) endorsed the ETS’s conclusions on its website,” the brief explained.

The Industrial Commission “declined to take judicial notice of the ETS and NC DHHS’s website and denied compensability, finding no evidence of increased risk, even though the plain language of 44 U.S.C. § 1507 mandated that ‘[t]he contents of the Federal Register shall be judicially noticed.’”

Nieft could not avoid potential COVID exposure on the job, the brief explained.

“As a direct patient care nurse at WF-Baptist, Nieft ‘could not avoid close physical proximity to the patients she was caring for and as part of her job she was exposed to the blood and bodily fluids of her patients,’” her lawyers wrote. “During COVID, nurses and other healthcare workers like Nieft had to care for patients in close proximity during COVID, unlike other public activities shut down under the Governor’s emergency order that expired in August 2022. Both parties agree that remote patient care and refusing to treat a patient in close personal proximity were not possible in Nieft’s occupation.”

For Nieft’s family to collect workers’ compensation, they “must show (1) a COVID exposure at work, (2) her COVID diagnosis, (3) an increased risk between her job and contracting COVID, and (4) the work-related exposure significantly contributing to her COVID,” according to the brief.

The brief addressed the hospital’s responses, including the argument that personal protective equipment shielded Nieft and other health care workers from COVID.

“WF-Baptist does not get a free pass from workers’ compensation responsibility just because its employees used PPE,” Nieft’s lawyers wrote. “The Commission mentioned PPE 21 times in 11 findings referencing PPE in denying that Nieft was exposed to COVID or had an increased risk. To the contrary, the high-risk nature of healthcare professions is what drives the need for PPE, and PPE does not inoculate employers from responsibility for workers’ compensation just as it does not eliminate all possibility of employees contracting COVID at work.”

Nieft’s family criticized the Industrial Commission’s approach to her COVID exposure.

“The Full Commission took great strides in finding facts about possible places in the public where Nieft could have been exposed to COVID outside of work to support its conclusion that Nieft did not contract COVID at work, despite a known exposure at work to a COVID-positive patient,” according to the brief.

“The Commission’s finding that Nieft was exposed to COVID no earlier than 5, 6, or 7 June 2021, simply because she occasionally went out in the community away from work, was based on pure speculation,” her lawyers wrote.

“Family of NC nurse who died from COVID seeks Appeals Court’s help” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.