A report by New York’s’ Attorney Generalfinds that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have undercounted by as much as 50% the number of the state’s nursing home resident who died at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York last spring.
The news has led the Republican leader of the State Senate to call for the resignation of the state health commissioner.
The number of nursing home residents who died from Covid has been in dispute for months. The state health department has said 8,711 residents died of the disease, but has not released key data, including the number of residents who died after they were transferred to a hospital.
Attorney General Tish James, who, like Cuomo, is a Democrat, and an ally of the governor, says investigators examined a sample of 62 or about ten percent of the state’s 600 nursing homes. The homes reported 1,914 deaths of residents from COVID-19, but the Department of Health reported 1,229 deaths at those same facilities.
In one example a nursing home reported five confirmed and six presumed COVID-19 deaths at the facility as of August 3 to the state health department. But the nursing home told the Attorney General’s investigators that there were a total of 27 COVID-19 deaths at the facility and 13 hospital deaths. That’s a discrepancy of 29 deaths.
Senator Jim Tedisco, a Minority Party Republican from Schenectady, has been asking Democrats who are in the Majority in his house to subpoena the health department to obtain the death records. He says he hopes the Attorney General’s report will now expedite those efforts, and he wonders why the Cuomo Administration did not just hand over the data when lawmakers asked for it last summer.
“The cover up can be worse, in many instances than what you are going to cover up,” said Tedisco. “Today the Attorney General has lifted the veil that was hiding the important real numbers of nursing home lives that have been lost under the governor’s leadership.”
Tedisco and others have criticized a controversial March 25th directive from the health department that nursing homes had to accept patients who were still ill with the coronavirus back into the nursing homes. They say that decision led to more deaths as the infection spread in the homes.
Governor Cuomo has blamed right wing media outlets for the controversy.
Commissioner Zucker, in a report last July, blamed asymptomatic nursing home workers for the deaths. He did not provide the specific dates when the nursing home residents were first diagnosed with the virus.
Senate GOP Leader, Rob Ortt, is calling for Zucker’s resignation, saying he betrayed the public trust.
“How can he lead when we have this report that shows he lied to the people of New York?” Ortt said. “He has no credibility. His department has no credibility”.
Democrats, who hold the majority in the legislature, are also expressing concern. The Chair of the Senate Investigations Committee, Jim Skoufis, hinted earlier in the week that he might issue subpoenas if the health department did not release the data by a scheduled legislative budget hearing on February 3rd.
“We’re all very upset that we haven’t gotten these answers,” Skoufis said.
That hearing has now been postponed until February 25th. A spokesman for the governor told the Albany Times Union that the hearing needed to be postponed so it would not interfere with the governor’s pre scheduled three times a week coronavirus briefings. Skoufis, in a statement, says if Zucker does not produce the data by the new date then he “will support a move to compel the information”.
The Attorney General’s report also finds that many nursing homes failed to comply with critical infection control polices, and that staff had insufficient personal protection equipment, including masks and gloves. Nursing homes with the lowest staff to patient ratios also had the highest number of deaths, the report finds.
Because of immunity provisions enacted in an emergency order by Cuomo, the nursing homes cannot be held liable for any of the missteps detailed in the report that could have led to more deaths. AG James recommends rescinding the immunity provisions.
Later in the afternoon, Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker released a lengthy statement, which can be found here.