Cuomo pushes back on outrage over COVID-19 nursing homes death numbers

(The Center Square) – New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo reiterated Friday that the state had fewer nursing home deaths due to COVID-19 than other states even as a report from Attorney General Letitia James indicates that number may be underreported.

That was the message he, Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker and Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa kept hammering as reporters asked during the governor’s briefing Friday why it took an attorney general’s investigation to produce the data journalists and politicians have requested for months.

Cuomo added that the report found no discrepancies in the actual death toll.

“Look, whether a person died in a hospital or died in a nursing home, it’s … people died. People died,” Cuomo said.

They said that the state chose initially to report deaths by location of death and not by where they contracted the virus. Zucker said that his office was working on getting that data ready in anticipation of upcoming budget hearings.

State legislators asked for that data back in August.

DeRosa said that back in March, the federal government did not offer guidance on how to report fatalities or other COVID-19 data. As a result, she said 13 states have yet to report any figures regarding nursing home deaths. Meanwhile, New York is one of nine states that report not only deaths, but deaths presumed to be tied to the virus.

She added that when the number of fatalities reached its apex in the spring, both nursing homes and hospitals reported deaths. That left it to the Department of Health to determine the best way to determine an accurate count.

“The cleanest way to do that was to say, ‘Do it where the person died, and then after the fact, we’ll go back and do a full audit,’ which is what’s happened now,” she said.

Cuomo said he has not seen legislation that would repeal immunity for healthcare providers.

Critics raised questions about the state’s decision to relocate coronavirus-positive patients from hospitals to nursing homes late last March. Shortly after that decision, which Cuomo said was done because of federal guidance, the death toll rose exponentially. An administration report later said that directive did not account for a rise in deaths as the virus was already in nearly all nursing homes by that time.

James in her report, though, said that decision may have increased the risk residents faced.

Even as Cuomo said the investigations on nursing homes stem from a “political attack” from the Trump Administration, he said this should not be about casting blame for what happened.

“I believe everybody did the best they could,” he said. “I believe the federal government, CDC, I believe they gave the best guidance they could. I believe they give the best guidance they can today. I believe the state Department of Health, they gave their best guidance and made the best decisions on the facts they had.”

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