How to apply for COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme

The Short-Term Absence Payment is also available to employers to help pay employees who are waiting on a COVID-19 PCR test result and have been told to stay at home. People doing Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) are not eligible for the Short-Term Absence Payment because they don’t need to wait long for results. If you're not sure which COVID-19 payment to apply for, use our online tool to check:

When you can apply

From 14 March 2022 you’ve got up to 8 weeks after your employee’s self-isolation ends to apply for the Leave Support Scheme, unless your employee’s self-isolation period ended before this date, then you can apply at any time. This also applies to you if you are self-employed.

The people named in your application must meet eligible health criteria.

Fill out the online form

The online form you fill out depends on whether you have people working for you or not. If you are applying for more than one person (including yourself) use the employer form.

You must be in New Zealand, or Australia, when you make the application.

If you've made a mistake on your application

You can call us on 0800 40 80 40 and we'll fix it for you.

You don't need to submit another application.

State sector organisations

A state sector organisation can ask for an exception to become eligible to apply for the Leave Support Scheme. State sector organisations should contact their monitoring agency if they wish to discuss this.

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The information on this page is a summary of the eligibility criteria and obligations set out in the declaration for COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme.

It does not replace the terms of the declaration and if there are any differences between this page and the declaration, the declaration prevails.