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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.
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His mother was never tested for COVID-19, but later died while exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. Between late March and early April, the facility was so understaffed due to staff quarantining, working from home, and preexisting low staffing, that the onsite management of the entire facility was left in the hands of just two nurse supervisors. During the week of April 5, 33 residents died at that facility, 15% of all its residents. √ Government guidance requiring the admission of COVID-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities and may have obscured the data available to assess that risk. The Office of the Attorney General is the only law enforcement agency in the state specifically mandated to investigate and prosecute abuse and neglect of residents in nursing homes.
The staggering toll is one of the most tragic aspects of the pandemic in New York and in nursing homes and senior care centers across the country. A report by the New York State Health Department listed 55 deaths presumably caused by the coronavirus at the facility since the outbreak began, the highest toll at any senior care center in New York. The New York attorney general on Thursday accused the state of drastically undercounting Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, saying in a stinging new rebuke of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration that the official tally of about 8,500 may be off by as much as 50 percent. During the initial outset of the pandemic, Cuomo received accolades for his response to COVID-19. His name was floated as a possible replacement of Joe Biden as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee due to his newfound popularity.
Undercounting deaths
For weeks, state officials refused to release nursing home numbers, citing concerns about residents' privacy. New York State Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt released a statement that read, “The report released today by the attorney general is confirmation for the thousands of families who lost loved ones to COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. For months, Gov. Cuomo and his administration have refused to be transparent or take any responsibility for actions they have taken during this public health crisis – including the deadly March 25, 2020, order to send COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. In January 2021, Attorney General of New York Letitia James released a report finding that Governor Andrew Cuomo had understated the toll of COVID-19-related deaths in state nursing homes by as much as 50 percent.
Cuomo's office said Thursday the state followed federal guidance when issuing its order on nursing homes. And there were 32 residents of the Parker Jewish Institute for Healthcare and Rehabilitation in Queens who died at the hospital in addition to 83 at the home. Information for the Bronxcare Special Care Center had previously shown only eight COVID-19 deaths.
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Around the same time, he was celebrating the state’s initial success in controlling the virus’s spread after a devastating spring during which tens of thousands of people died. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether Mr. Cuomo and his aides provided false data on resident deaths to the Justice Department, according to people with knowledge of the investigation. For months, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has defended himself against criticism of his administration’s handling of the coronavirus in nursing homes. The audit also stated “persistent underinvestment” in public health over the past decade may have hindered the DOH’s ability to prepare and respond to infectious disease outbreaks at the nursing homes. But Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s senior fellow for health policy, said the information put out by the DOH Saturday was a small fraction of what it had requested.
In light of these revelations, New Yorkers are furious at both Cuomo and negligent nursing homes. The lawmaker, Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, had said he believed the administration was “trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence” when it withheld the data. Mr. Cuomo is now in the most turbulent period of his three terms in office, his political future clouded as New York continues to grapple with the virus and the economic toll it has taken. Dozens of current and former employees of the governor’s office during Mr. Cuomo’s tenure have also described it more broadly as a chaotic and unprofessional workplace that was particularly toxic for young women. The acting executive deputy commissioner of the DOH disagreed with the report in a 13-page response, which was also included in the audit. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office referred CNN to the DOH’s response to the audit.
New York undercounted nursing home deaths by as much 50 percent, report finds
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.
Attorney Seth DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had launched an investigation into New York state's handling of nursing home deaths. The Eastern District is handling the investigation because Audrey Strauss, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, is the mother-in-law of Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, meaning that Strauss would have to recuse herself from any involvement in the investigation. During his confirmation for the position of U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland said "ith all of these investigations, the Justice Department is open to evidence of fraud, false statements, violations of the law," in regards to the federal investigation into Cuomo and his administration.
The nurses are beginning to vote on whether to authorize a strike if a new agreement is not reached. An earlier version of this article misstated the formula for case fatality rate. It is the number of deaths divided by the number of cases, not the number of cases divided by the number of deaths. At NYU Langone Health, chief hospital epidemiologist Dr. Michael Phillips said a growing number of seniors are being admitted to his hospital with COVID-19.
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.
It also recommends the governor’s office assess and document its internal control environment at the health department and take steps to ensure cooperation with local officials, state oversight inquires and external reporting. There was no immediate response from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat whose pandemic response has been widely praised but who has also been criticized for waiting until May to reverse a state policy that required long-term care facilities to accept recovering patients who may still test positive for Covid-19. New York state finally released fatality data for individual nursing homes, painting a much grimmer picture of the toll taken by the COVID-19 virus. The New York Times is tracking the coronavirus at nursing homes and long-term care centers. “I’m concerned about the uptick in hospitalizations and deaths among seniors, and concerned about the lack of urgency at my mother’s nursing home in getting the residents and staff vaccinated" with the latest booster, she said.
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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