Table of Content
That 50% refers to a narrow slice of data – information from 62 hand-selected nursing home facilities and from a time period of just a couple months last spring and summer. As James’ office stated, from “March through August 3, DOH reported a total of 6,423 resident deaths in nursing homes due to COVID-19, including 3,640 confirmed COVID-19 deaths and 2,783 presumed7 COVID-19 deaths.” The data came from New York’s 619 nursing homes, which reported the deaths to DOH. And his health department later released an internal report that concluded asymptomatic nursing home staffers were the real spreaders of the virus, not the 6,300 recovering patients released from hospitals into nursing homes. There are 619 nursing homes in New York, and 401 of these facilities are for-profit, privately owned, and operated entities. Of the state’s 401 for-profit facilities, more than two-thirds – 280 nursing homes – have the lowest possible CMS Staffing ratings. The staffing rating reflects the number of staffing hours in the nursing department of a facility relative to the number of residents.
Jacomowitz said Amsterdam Nursing Home's cooling tower was cleaned prior to start-up in the spring and tested according to the city's rules. He said the facility "continues to work closely with the Department of Health on anything having to do with the water supply and with anything at all to clear up this matter." Investigators, in their survey of 62 nursing homes , also noticed another pattern.
Your County’s Risk
For all 43 states that break out nursing home data, resident deaths make up 44% of total COVID deaths in their states, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Assuming the same proportion held in New York, that would translate to more than 11,000 nursing home deaths. State health department surveys show 21,000 nursing home beds are lying empty this year, 13,000 more than expected — an increase of almost double the official state nursing home death tally. While some of that increase can be attributed to fewer new admissions and people pulling their loved ones out, it suggests that many others who aren’t there anymore died.
Nursing homes have become a particular sore point for the Cuomo administration, which has generally received praise for steps that flattened the curve of infections and New York’s highest-in-the-nation 32,787 overall deaths. “New York Attorney General Letitia James’ report finally shows what we have all suspected for months. Gov. Cuomo and his administration could be complicit in a cover-up of the true effects of this disastrous decision.
COVID-19 deaths in NY nursing homes were 50 percent higher than claimed: probe
But Zucker also acknowledged that the state health department’s own audit of nursing home data shows that more than 3,800 nursing home residents died in hospitals from March 1 of last year to Jan. 19, putting the total number of state COVID-19 deaths tied to nursing homes at almost 13,000. “The investigations also revealed that nursing homes’ lack of compliance with infection control protocols put residents at increased risk of harm, and facilities that had lower pre-pandemic staffing ratings had higher COVID-19 fatality rates,” the report states. The report, based on preliminary findings, suggests that a larger number of long-term care residents died from the virus than reflected in state Department of Health data and that government guidance requiring admission of Covid-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at increased risk of harm. The state has been accused of depressing the total number of deaths by only counting those that occurred in the facilities, leaving out any resident who was transferred to a hospital. On March 4, 2021, interviews and reports from The New York Times found that several of Cuomo's aides, Melissa DeRosa, Linda Lacewell and Jim Malatras had rewritten a report from state health officials to omit 9,250 COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents. Following Attorney Genera Letitia James' January report that first exposed the cover-up, Cuomo's administration released complete data, including the nursing home deaths, and cited the possibility of a politically-motivated investigation from the Department of Justice as a justification.
In late January 2021, New York State Attorney General Letitia James unveiled a report titled “Nursing Home Response to COVID-19 Pandemic”. It was the result of a months-long study James and her team conducted to address allegations of nursing home neglect related to COVID-19 in the state. As the governor became engulfed in controversy, the Legislature’s Democratic leaders moved to strip him of the emergency powers he had been granted when the pandemic hit New York.
Nursing Home Death Counts
For example, I have been asking the Health Department for months for a basic breakdown of how coronavirus deaths are being recorded and have yet to receive a response to my repeated inquiries. I hope that my legislative colleagues take action now to remove these governor’s extraordinary powers and schedule appropriate hearings immediately using subpoena power, if necessary, to get answers that have been dodged for so many months. OAG received reports that nursing homes did not properly screen staff members before allowing them to enter the facility to work with residents. Among those reports, OAG received an allegation that a for-profit nursing home north of New York City failed to consistently conduct COVID-19 employee screening. He claimed that New York state did not cover-up the number of deaths in nursing homes, but acknowledged that officials should have released the information earlier.
In early March 2020, OAG received and began to investigate allegations and indications of COVID-19-related neglect of residents in nursing homes. At the direction of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on April 23, OAG set up a hotline to receive complaints relating to communications by nursing homes with family members prohibited from in-person visits to nursing homes and formally initiated a large-scale investigation of nursing homes’ responses to the pandemic. OAG received more than 770 complaints on the hotline through Aug. 3, and an additional 179 complaints through Nov. 16.
Prior to the report released by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Andrew Cuomo had received the International Emmy Founders Award from the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his COVID-19 press briefings. On August 24, 2021, the Academy revoked his award, due to sexual harassment allegations, however, and not due to the nursing home scandal. In November 2021, a report by the New York State Assembly found that Cuomo's executive chamber had "substantially revised" the report to exclude deaths of nursing home residents at hospitals in order to boost Cuomo's reputation. The Health Department report revived questions about how New York was counting such deaths. At the time, the state’s tally only included residents who had died inside a nursing home; it excluded those who died at a hospital or other facility.
The map and table below showing coronavirus cases at individual nursing homes were last updated as recently as Jan. 12, 2021. Over the course of the pandemic, 1 in 5 COVID-19 deaths was among those who were in a long-term care facility. Last spring and summer, death rates declined overall as more people gained protection from vaccination and prior infection. But the share of COVID-19–related deaths for the oldest old — adults 85 and older, who make up 2% of the population — grew to 40%. Phillips also urges people to get their boosters, especially if they are at risk of serious illness or planning to spend time with someone who is.
Asked at a previously scheduled news conference about the attorney general's report, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, "We have to get the full truth, and we have to make sure it never ever happens again, nothing like this happens again, and we have to be honest about the numbers." New York still leads the nation in Covid-19 deaths with nearly 44,000, NBC News data shows. The Upper East Side Rehabilitation and Nursing Center had 29 deaths at the home, and another 51 in a hospital.
Cobble Hill and other senior communities that are anywhere near the pandemic's center stopped visitation weeks ago to keep the deadly virus out. The center's website encourages families to sign up for email updates and to schedule virtual visits with frail loved ones. "The biggest thing is the lack of knowing," said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams.
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