New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his government have faced a barrage of criticism in the wake of a report by his own Attorney General in which he claims that the state has Covid-19 nursing home deaths with as many as 50 percent.
The state’s public death rate for nursing homes does not include residents who died from the coronavirus after being transferred to hospitals, but only deaths that occurred at facilities. The report by Attorney General Letitia James examined 62 nursing homes – about 10 percent of the total state – and found that the approach in New York left a large number of deaths in the hospital outside the state’s official nursing home.
Lawyers, researchers and lawmakers from both parties have been campaigning for months for the Cuomo government to disclose the full number of deaths associated with long-term care facilities.
State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, a Republican, accuses the government of concealing the deadly impact of the virus. “It was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and the state of New York,” said Ortt, who asked that the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, must resign. “Why did the Attorney General in New York State need to get it?”
Cuomo, a Democrat, did not immediately comment on the report. Zucker denied that the state counted deaths at nursing homes, saying the state has always made it clear that its data only includes deaths that occurred at facilities, not outside of them.
“The word ‘undercounted’ implies that there are more total deaths than have been reported; this is factually incorrect,” Zucker said in a statement. Referring to the State Health Department, he said: “DOH has consistently made it clear that our numbers are reported based on the place of death.”
The state has yet to disclose a full number of deaths related to nursing homes, as it is still investigating the data because it has captured “numerous inaccuracies” in the original numbers that facilities reported to the state, Zucker said.
Zucker said the data the state has reviewed so far has shown 3,829 hospital deaths among nursing home residents. This would increase the state’s mortality rate on deaths related to nursing homes from about 8,700 to more than 12,500.
The report also found that the failure to properly follow the infection control, the lack of access to personal protective equipment and tests, and insufficient personnel, contributed to the deadly spread of the virus. James, a Democrat, is investigating more than 20 facilities accused of failing to protect residents and staff members.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat and chairman of the health committee, said in a statement that James’ findings were “disturbing” but that “I am unfortunately not surprised by them.”
“It is critical that the Cuomo government finally release accurate data on deaths in nursing homes, which my colleagues and I have been requesting for months,” Rivera said.
On Thursday, criticism of the Cuomo government also came from independent experts and lawyers, who said the state had undermined its response to the pandemic by not disclosing the full death toll earlier.
New York’s approach to the death toll in nursing homes ‘has completely obscured the true mortality rate and its impact’, said David Grabowski, a professor and expert in healthcare policy, that such data could help divert resources to difficult facilities. and to help policymakers determine what went wrong.
“We do not yet know the exact number of deaths,” he said. “It’s important that we get the right number, and it’s unclear why it took so long.”
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Because the Attorney General’s report examined only a fraction of the state’s nursing homes and the state’s audit continues, the full death toll is still unknown.
“It is shocking that the Cuomo government continues to withhold basic information about a serious public health crisis that New Yorkers urgently want to know and clearly have the right to know,” said Bill Hammond, a senior fellow at the Empire Center, a Conservative think tank. , said in a statement. In September, the group sued the state for failing to disclose the number of nursing home residents who died outside the death row. The state has promised to release the data by March 22, the organization said.
Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association, a trade group representing nursing homes, defends the state’s approach, arguing that it is more reliable and objective to report deaths based on their location, rather as to associate all Covid-19. death of residents with their facilities.
“Can you know 100 percent where they are infected?” Hanse said. “It could have been in transport, or an individual could have come from the community and then into the nursing home” before succumbing to the virus in hospital, he said.
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The nursing homes in New York have suffered devastating losses and isolation for almost a year. Cuomo was previously under fire for a March assignment ordering nursing homes to accept Covid-19 patients discharged from hospitals. His goal was to clean much-needed hospital beds, but leaders in the nursing home said they were afraid the directive would contribute to the spread of the virus, and Cuomo reversed that. More recently, family members Cuomo and state lawmakers have been pushing for them to be designated as essential caregivers to visit their loved ones in facilities.
“It annoys me that they were not transparent from the start. Every death that is not taken into account is someone’s loved one,” Gelsey Randazzo Markese said. She spent months on essential caregiver visits to see her 91-year-old grandmother. who died last month of natural causes.
“It’s important to have the number so people can see how shocking it is,” Markese said. “So we can continue to close this chapter and find out what we can do to prevent it from happening again.”