The Cuomo administration’s alleged misrepresentation of deaths in nursing homes in New York is serious, and it could earn federal criminal charges.
On March 25, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order requiring nursing homes in New York to admit patients to the hospital who tested positive for Covid-19. The order also prohibits nursing homes from requiring hospitalized residents who are considered “medically stable” to be tested before admission or readmission. By the end of the summer, New York had more than 32,000 Covid deaths, the highest in the country and more than double any other state. If New York were its own country, it would have ranked among the top 10 for Covid deaths. The number of deaths translated to the country’s second highest death rate – more than three times the national average.
What drew the Justice Department’s attention was the Cuomo government’s claim that the deaths in New York’s nursing home were lower than many other states and that its order on March 25 did not contribute to the extraordinary number of New Yorkers who died from Covid do not have. Due to the excessive effect of the virus on the elderly, sick and debilitated, it seems unlikely. On August 26, the Justice’s Civil Rights Division, which relies on its jurisdiction to investigate government facilities under federal civil rights law of institutionalized persons, asked the Cuomo government for information on New York’s public nursing homes, which number less than five. % of nursing homes in the state.
In September, New York released data showing that Covid’s deaths were one-third among government-controlled nursing homes. The undercount appears to be due to several factors. First, when a nursing home resident who contracted Covid died after being transported to a hospital for treatment, New York did not consider it a ‘nursing home death’. Second, New York did not include deaths until Medicare and Medicaid Services centers began reporting Covid to nursing homes in mid-May. CMS made reporting on Covid deaths optional and New York apparently preferred to keep the information to itself.
But officials in New York knew that the data they reported to CMS only went back to mid-May. Cuomo’s government misled the public when it relied on data to claim at the end of September that total deaths in the state’s nursing home were low.