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Congressman Chris Jacobs, R-NY-27, said, “Two days ago, Gov. Cuomo callously remarked ‘incompetent government kills.’ Tragically, those words can now clearly be used to describe the actions of his own administration. Gov. Cuomo directly jeopardized the health and safety of thousands of nursing home residents with his directive mandating COVID-positive patients be accepted back. For months, the governor has refused to take responsibility, and his Department of Health commissioner has refused to provide transparent information to elected officials and grieving families. U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik from New York's 21st congressional district called for a federal investigation into the Cuomo administration as early as May 2020. Representative Nicole Malliotakis from New York's 11th congressional district began to circulate a petition calling for Cuomo to resign.
The state's official COVID-19 death count in nursing home is roughly 8,700 right now. A 56 percent increase on that count would bring the total deaths to well over 13,000. A controversial March 25 order to send recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes that was designed to free up hospital bed space at the height of the pandemic has drawn withering criticism from relatives and patient advocates who contend it accelerated nursing home outbreaks.
Countries
In fact, the OAG found nursing home resident deaths appear to be undercounted by DOH by approximately 50%. Since May, federal regulators have required nursing homes to submit data on coronavirus deaths each week, whether or not residents died in the facility or at a hospital. Because the requirement came after the height of New York’s outbreak, the available data is relatively small. According to the federal data, roughly a fifth of the state’s homes reported resident deaths from early June to mid July — a tally of 323 dead, 65 percent higher than the state’s count of 195 during that time period. The OAG's report is only referring to the count of people who were in nursing homes but transferred to hospitals and later died.
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.
Undercounting deaths
DOH does not disagree that the number of people transferred from a nursing home to a hospital is an important data point, and is in the midst of auditing this data from nursing homes. As the OAG report states, reporting from nursing homes is inconsistent and often inaccurate. The New York State Office of the Attorney General report is clear that there was no undercount of the total death toll from this once-in-a-century pandemic. The OAG affirms that the total number of deaths in hospitals and nursing homes is full and accurate. New York State Department of Health has always publicly reported the number of fatalities within hospitals irrespective of the residence of the patient, and separately reported the number of fatalities within nursing home facilities and has been clear about the nature of that reporting. Indeed, the OAG acknowledges in a footnote on page 71 that DOH was always clear that the data on its website pertains to in-facility fatalities and does not include deaths outside of a facility.
But there were 20 additional deaths in the hospital, according to the new data. More than 15,000 New York nursing home patients have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic started. In one week alone in April 2020, 5,156 nursing home patients died of the virus, the state stats show. There is no antiviral medication to treat RSV, but health officials say parents should seek medical attention if their children are having difficulty breathing. RSV cases have also been overwhelming hospitals nationwide, but officials in New York say that it has not become an issue yet in the state, however they are watching bed capacity and pediatric admissions closely. The contract for thousands of nurses at a dozen private sector hospitals in the city, including Mount Sinai Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Maimonides Medical Center, is set to expire at the end of the year.
Your County’s Risk
But the biggest increase he’s seen is in the emergency department, “which is very, very busy” with COVID-19, as well as flu patients. Easing restrictions, broader immunity in the general population and mixed messages about whether the pandemic is over have softened the sense of threat felt by younger adults. That may be a welcome development for most, but the attitude has seeped into nursing homes in troubling ways. Clear messages about what the vaccine can do — and what it can’t — are needed, said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit nursing homes.
The audit shows a total of 13,147 deaths happened during that time frame, but only 9,076 were reported. The New York health department undercounted the number of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes by thousands during former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s time in office, an audit conducted by state officials found. The Office of Attorney General hand-picked 62 nursing home facilities and requested in-facility death totals and total deaths, which would include patients who were sent to hospitals and died there.
New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there. It is worth noting that there remain 13 states that report no information on nursing home fatalities and only nine states, including New York, report nursing home fatalities that are “presumed” COVID and not confirmed COVID. DOH has consistently found numerous inaccuracies when examining unverified data and, as a result, months ago DOH began an audit of fatality numbers reported by nursing homes to ensure public release of these statistics were accurate. This audit found entries where a deceased individual was listed as dying both in a hospital and in a nursing home, duplicate entries, and entries where the individual had no name or listed a date of death in a facility before they had been admitted, and other issues that suggested inaccurate data inputs. Over the past months, DOH contacted numerous individual facilities to resolve these discrepancies.
"FBI reportedly investigating Cuomo role in shielding donors from Covid liability". The Javits Center pictured on April 2, 2020, outfitted to care for patients with COVID-19. Throughout the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have highlighted just how important masks and other forms of personal protective equipment are. With regard to the harassment allegations, Mr. Cuomo has apologized for acting “in a way that made people feel uncomfortable,” but he has also said he did so unintentionally and has insisted repeatedly that he will not resign. Mr. Kim said the governor had called him and had threatened to ruin his reputation unless he rescinded the remarks. At a subsequent news conference, Mr. Cuomo responded by denouncing Mr. Kim in scathing terms.
Cissy Sanders of Austin, Texas, met multiple obstacles trying to get a booster for her 73-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home. "Thank you from the bottom of our hearts," Tuchman said before he led the team back inside to resume caring for hundreds of frail, sick residents. "I lost sleep last night thinking of the anxiety and fear that patients and family members may feel as a result of the ban." "We all know these are difficult times and there's a level of complication," Adams said. You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP.
Representative Antonio Delgado from New York's 19th congressional district also called for an investigation into Cuomo, saying those who lost loved ones "deserve answers and accountability". Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York's 14th congressional district stated, “I support our state’s return to co-equal governance and stand with our local officials calling for a full investigation of the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during COVID-19." Then in January, Ms. James reported that the administration had undercounted virus-related deaths of nursing home residents by several thousand. Hours later, the Health Department added more than 3,800 such deaths to its tally. As politicians, health experts and federal investigators called for complete figures for the deaths of nursing home residents, the Cuomo administration continued to delay the data’s release, saying more time was need to compile and verify it. Cuomo has insisted that it was up to the nursing homes to alert state health officials if they were not equipped to take care of infected residents.
The group wants daily counts of fatalities from each nursing home in order to track the virus’ path over time. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Health Department issued a controversial March 25, 2020, directive saying the facilities could not bar infected patients, a decision some reports have said caused more deaths. There were 69 confirmed and presumed deaths from the virus among nursing-home residents for the week ending Jan. 4, up from 43 the week before. COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes are rising amid the Omicron surge — but the tally is a fraction of those who died in the facilities in the same period last year, state records show. An earlier version of this article transposed the national case fatality rate and the median case fatality rate in nursing homes.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has been accused of deliberately obscuring the full scope of nursing home deaths in New York. People can get Legionnaires’ disease when they breathe in water vapor containing the Legionella bacteria, which grows in wet environments including hot tubs, fountains and cooling towers. Deaths attributed to Legionnaires' are rare, but the risk is higher for older populations such as nursing home residents.
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