The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund will provide financial compensation to people with 9/11 cancer and other 9/11 illnesses who succumb to COVID-19, fund officials recently confirmed.

Officials amended the fund’s guidance and included information related to the coverage on its website recently, making it clear that if a victim of the terrorist attacks or a worker who suffered an illness because of his or her rescue work at one of the sites on 9/11 gets COVID-19 and dies, their families will still be able to apply for compensation.

Fund’s Website Addresses COVID-19 and 9/11 Illnesses

On September 9, the new information was posted on the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund’s “Frequently Asked Questions” webpage, NBC News reported.

“If an individual with an eligible 9/11-related illness passes away, and the death certificate lists COVID-19 as the cause of death, will this affect the VCF’s evaluation of a wrongful death claim filed on the victim’s behalf?” the question posted on the website says.

In short, the answer is no.

The 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund was established to compensate those who died or suffered physiological harm – also known as 9/11 illnesses —  as a result of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania. The death or illness could have been a direct result of being at the targeted sites or a result of the “debris removal efforts in the immediate aftermath of those attacks,” the fund’s website says.

The first kind of documentation fund officials review when processing a claim from a victim’s family member is the death certificate. As long as a 9/11-related physical health condition that is considered eligible for compensation is listed as either the immediate cause of death, underlying cause of death or significant condition contributing to the death, the fund’s website says, fund administrators will award wrongful death compensation.

If the death certificate does not list a 9/11 fund eligible cause, “then we will need medical evidence that draws the connection for us, and demonstrates how the VCF-eligible condition resulted in the death,” the fund’s webpage says.

According to U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Nicole Navas Oxman, the new information on the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund’s FAQs page isn’t a change in policy. “It was a clarification of how existing policy relating to how the VCF reviews death certificates applies in context of COVID,” she told NBC News.

The compensation fund was created through an act of Congress and many saw it as a means of avoiding an avalanche of class action lawsuits and other legal action to protect survivors.

Reaction to the 9/11 Victims Fund Position

Victims and advocates for victims of the 9/11 attacks praised the fund’s actions in public statements to the news media last week. John Feal, who was a demolition supervisor on the ground at the site of the former World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan and who now runs the nonprofit Fealgood Foundation to advocate for those suffering from 9/11 illnesses, spoke to NBC News.

“The decision … to allow families of those lost to COVID-19 while battling serious 9/11 illness was not an easy decision,” he wrote in an email to NBC. “And for that I personally thank [fund special master Rupa Bhattacharyya] for showing empathy, sympathy and doing the morally correct thing to a shrinking fraternity of heroes.”

Coronavirus Pandemic Hits Milestone, 9/11 Survivors Suffer

The coronavirus death toll topped the 200,000 mark in the U.S. on Tuesday while local, state, and federal officials continued with a piecemeal, uneven response to the pandemic amid changing guidance and messaging from the Trump administration.

According to data collected by Johns Hopkins, the U.S. leads the rest of the world in total number of deaths from COVID-19 – more than 201,617 by 5 p.m. eastern time Wednesday – and in total number of confirmed cases. America also has the 11th highest percentage of deaths per capita and the 54th highest percentage of deaths per case.

9/11 survivors have been among those most vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their chronic 9/11 illnesses – many of which involve respiratory damage.

Newsweek has reported that by September 4, a reported “1,185 first responders and 287 survivors were confirmed to have tested positive for the coronavirus,” according to the World Trade Center Health Program. Of those, 197 had been hospitalized and 44 purportedly died. That number could be higher though because the program is only counting patients treated at a Clinical Center of Excellence or Nationwide Provider Network facility.

“Almost two decades later, many responders and survivors still suffer the long-term health effects, both physically and mentally,” the program’s administrator, Dr. John Howard, told Newsweek. “Their resolve and health are now being further tested by the COVID-19 pandemic.”