Justice condemns city hall to compensate family of servant killed by Covid

The Labor Court ordered the Piracicaba City Hall, in the interior of São Paulo, to compensate for moral and material damages the family of community health agent Eva Rodrigues Soria, 40, who died of Covid-19. The city intends to appeal the decision.

The stipulated amount is BRL 200,000, in addition to two monthly pensions of BRL 2,600 for 40 years, one for the victim’s son and another for the victim’s husband.

In a statement, the prefecture said only that it was notified of the decision and that it will appeal. In the process, the municipality denied the causal link (evidence that one action was a consequence of another) between the disease and work.

In the opinion of Judge Izabela Tofano de Campos Leite, the “activity carried out by the deceased employee exposed her to an accentuated risk, as evidenced in the records that she treated contaminated patients, or at least with symptoms of the disease, in a way that the responsibility was established”.

The stipulated period of the pension was based on the life expectancy of Brazilian women indicated by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) in January 2021, when the process was opened: 80 years.

Soria died in August 2020, from complications related to the Covid-19 infection, after being hospitalized for about five days. At the time, there were still no vaccines against the disease available.

She worked at a Family Health Unit in Piracicaba and, in overtime, worked at the reception of an Emergency Care Unit.

According to Roberta Bonfiglio and Paula Filzek, lawyers for the family, the servant suffered an accident at work, as she was infected while carrying out her professional activities for the municipality.

“We proved that her husband and son, who lived with her at the time, were not leaving the house, as the first one was away from the INSS. [Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social] and the second took remote classes via the computer. The only person who went out and had contact with possible contamination was Eva,” said Filzek.

Soria made more than 17 patient visits a day, above the average for other professionals, the lawyers say. She worked with a fabric protective mask.

Also according to the lawyers, the City Hall of Piracicaba “was fully aware that the employee had asthma, therefore, a risk group for aggravation of the disease, and even so, it did not remove her”.

Questioned by the report, the city did not answer whether it knew that the server had asthma.