New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration released new data this week showing that the number of catastrophic coronavirus deaths in the state in nursing homes and other adult care facilities is even higher than previously reported.
And thousands of additional coronavirus-positive patients were sent to nursing homes under the governor’s widely criticized directive in March.
“The big picture is that the New York nursing home pandemic, the way it affected New York nursing homes, was much, much worse than we imagined,” said Bill Hammond, senior health policy researcher in the group Empire Center reflection in Albany. “And it was much, much worse than what state officials were admitting. And by state officials I mean Governor Cuomo and the health commissioner.”
ARCHIVE – In the archival photo of this Saturday, January 23, 2021, Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to reporters during a press conference at a COVID-19 vaccination site at the William Reid apartments in Brooklyn, New York. More than 9,000 patients recovering from coronavirus in New York State were released from hospitals to nursing homes at the height of the pandemic under a controversial order that was dismissed amid criticism that accelerated outbreaks, according to new records obtained by The Associated Press. (AP Photo / Mary Altaffer, Pool)
The Empire Center sued the Cuomo government in August after the governor and state health officials refused to comply with requests for freedom of information, Hammond told Fox News late on Thursday. After months of litigation, a judge ordered state health officials to hand over the data and pay the Empire Center’s legal fees.
“Until about 10 days ago, the official death toll was about 9,000,” in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, said Hammond. “It’s not that more people died at that time, it’s that we have a more accurate count.”
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Initially, state health officials were releasing only a number of people who died physically within the nursing facility – but were leaving out sick patients who had been transferred to hospitals with serious cases.
“It turns out that there were a lot of people, thousands of people, and we knew they were doing it that way, they admitted,” he said. “But they never gave you a good reason to do it that way.”
This raised questions from reporters, researchers and even state lawmakers, said Hammond – and the government’s response was to continue to withhold information.
At least 14,100 residents of nursing homes or assisted living facilities have died of coronavirus, according to the new data – with 949 other victims of other adult care facilities confirmed or presumed dead from the disease, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. market.
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This marks the second correction for underreported deaths in a few weeks.
The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James said on January 28 that the state had underestimated the number of deaths caused by asylum-linked coronavirus by up to 50%.
“The attorney general’s report confirmed what many of us already knew: the Cuomo administration intentionally withheld information from the public, because the reality of COVID-19 in nursing homes was far worse than imagined,” William Barclay, the leader Republican in the New York State Assembly, told Fox News on Thursday. “Democrats in the legislature have the ability to compel the statement of the Commissioner of Health [Dr. Howard] Zucker and obtain documents explicitly detailing exactly what happened around the governor’s March 25 order to admit COVID-19 positive residents in state nursing homes. It’s time for them to do that. “
The government was plagued by criticism of a controversial measure on March 25, when Cuomo told wards to accept patients who had confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases.
Hammond said the data on his request significantly increased the total number of cases, but trends remained consistent in terms of when peak cases occurred, shedding little light on the governor’s controversial order.
But in response to a separate request for freedom of information this week, state health officials told the Associated Press that more than 9,000 virus patients were sent to nursing homes in the state before Cuomo reversed the directive on May 10.
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“At least 98% of the nursing home facilities in the state had COVID in their facilities prior to their first admission or readmission and, as we have seen across the country, the main factor of infections appears to be asymptomatic employees, through no fault of their own.” , state health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a statement. He added that the March 25 order followed the guidelines of the Trump administration, a point that Cuomo also highlighted.
The revelations undermined part of the “goodwill” that Hammond said Cuomo won during his daily press conferences at the height of the New York outbreak.
“He was saying things about the situation in New York’s nursing homes that were obviously misleading and false,” he said. “I don’t think he understands why his briefings worked is that they were basically about transparency and real-time access to data.”
Cuomo wrote a book about his pandemic leadership and previously used the lowest numbers since unmasked in an effort to illustrate his success in leading the Empire State through his pandemic ordeal.
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The New York Post reported on Thursday night that a top Cuomo aide told Democratic state lawmakers in particular that the state hid data from nursing homes to prevent the Trump administration from finding out.
His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.