Report Finds Underreporting of COVID Nursing Home Deaths

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• Latest Maps and Data
• Cuomo is smirking at James’ scandal, but he still has worse to answer for
• Air Force grounds entire B-2 bomber fleet after fiery emergency landing
• Federal politicians
• How Did New York Nursing Homes Fail To Protect Residents?
• New York City inspectors cited the nursing home repeatedly for improper maintenance of cooling towers

The audit also criticized the DOH for not collectively analyzing on a routine basis the multiple data sources it has to respond more effectively to an infectious disease outbreak. A review by the Times found that Amsterdam Nursing Home was cited seven times in the past six years for rules violations ranging from not conducting routine maintenance to using inadequate start-up procedures for the towers. One infraction resulted in a $500 fine related to record keeping for water sample analysis, while the other six were dismissed after hearings. The failure of a cooling tower in the NYC nursing home allegedly allowed the disease to survive easier, leading to the outbreak that killed five patients. State Rep. Elise Stefanik, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, joined other Republicans in calling for the resignations of Cuomo and Zucker. That total put New York’s fatalities ahead of California’s by about 2,600, the Empire Center found.

To that end, DOH continues to follow-up on all allegations of misconduct by operators and is actively working in partnership with the OAG to enforce the law accordingly (Pages 17-21). Democratic staff members were offered an invitation by the Republican staff to attend. The readmissions were part of the overall directive that required nursing homes to admit patients even if they had COVID-19 in the first months of the pandemic.

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State health officials could see from the data that a significant number of nursing home residents had died after being transferred to hospitals. But when Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides saw the report, they rewrote it to eliminate the higher count. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal also reported in March 2021 that some of Cuomo’s top aides allegedly rewrote a July nursing home report from state health officials to hide the higher Covid-19 death toll among the state’s nursing home residents.

At another for-profit facility on Long Island, COVID-19 patients who were transferred to the facility after a hospital stay and were supposed to be placed in a separate COVID-19 unit in the nursing home were, in fact, scattered throughout the facility despite available beds in the COVID-19 unit. This situation was allegedly resolved only after someone at the facility learned of an impending DOH infection control visit scheduled for the next day, before which those residents were hurriedly transferred to the appropriate designated unit. The report also noted that some nursing homes failed to follow basic steps to control the spread of coronavirus — for example, continuing communal dining practices and not isolating residents who tested positive.

Cuomo is smirking at James’ scandal, but he still has worse to answer for

At issue was a policy issued in March 2020 that effectively ordered nursing homes to take back residents who had been discharged from hospitals after being treated for Covid-19. The goal was to keep virus patients from overwhelming hospitals, a step other states also took. In April, The New York Times reported that Mr. Cuomo’s aides had gone to far greater lengths than previously known to obscure the death toll, repeatedly overruling state health officials over a span of at least five months. In January, New York’s attorney general said the administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by several thousand. Mr. Cuomo later acknowledged as much, blaming the lower figure on fears that the Trump administration would use the data as a political weapon.

Attorney Seth DuCharme of the Eastern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have launched an investigation into New York state's handling of nursing home deaths. The New York Post recently reported that the state required nursing homes to offer vaccines to all employees and residents starting on April 29th, 2021. Those admitted or hired after this date can get their shot in two weeks or less. In addition to the failure of many nursing homes to protect residents, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has come under fire for possibly skewing data about the pandemic in 2020.

Air Force grounds entire B-2 bomber fleet after fiery emergency landing

With no uniform processes or reporting mechanisms, every state reported data in different ways. And data requests from federal CMS, HHS and CDC at various points in the pandemic muddied the reporting across the board. There is no satisfaction in pointing out inaccuracies; every death to this terrible disease is tragic, and New York was hit hardest and earliest of any state as a direct result of the federal government's negligence. There is still an ongoing crisis that is being actively managed and investigated and we will review the remainder of the recommendations as we continue to fight with every resource and asset to protect all New Yorkers from the scourge of COVID.

In the last week, the U.S. has seen a record-high number of positive flu tests. Around three quarters of the nation's pediatric hospital beds are full as RSV remains a top concern. The possible strike comes as New York prepares for a possible "tripledemic", as COVID-19, flu and RSV cases continue to fill the state's hospitals. "It's very unfortunate because during the height of the pandemic, we nurses saved New York, without any proper PPE. We put everybody ahead of us." Hagans says their members are frustrated with the pace and progress of negotiations, saying all they are asking for are fair wages, quality health benefits nurses and safe working conditions.

He launched daily COVID-19 press briefings which saw early acclaim, but often announced new pandemic policy and then required health officials "match their health guidance to the announcements." The F.B.I. has since been looking at information that New York submitted last year to the Justice Department, which had asked for data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes, according to people familiar with the investigation. Behind the scenes, some of Mr. Cuomo’s advisers were battling top state health officials over the nursing home death count in the Health Department report, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Times. “As the number of out-of-facility deaths were reported last January this is not news, however what is peculiar is the Comptroller’s release of this audit now – but no one has ever accused him of being above politics,” Azzopardi told CNN in a statement. New York leads the country in the number of Covid-19 deaths with 43,734, according to the latest NBC News tally, most of which occurred in the early days of the pandemic, when public health officials were trying figure out how the disease was spreading. “As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily suffered at such an alarming rate,” James said in a statement.

DOH does not disagree that the number of people transferred from a nursing home to a hospital is an important data point, and is in the midst of auditing this data from nursing homes. As the OAG report states, reporting from nursing homes is inconsistent and often inaccurate. The New York State Office of the Attorney General report is clear that there was no undercount of the total death toll from this once-in-a-century pandemic. The OAG affirms that the total number of deaths in hospitals and nursing homes is full and accurate. New York State Department of Health has always publicly reported the number of fatalities within hospitals irrespective of the residence of the patient, and separately reported the number of fatalities within nursing home facilities and has been clear about the nature of that reporting. Indeed, the OAG acknowledges in a footnote on page 71 that DOH was always clear that the data on its website pertains to in-facility fatalities and does not include deaths outside of a facility.

The audit also found the health department failed to report more than 50% of the nursing home deaths from April 15 through May 2, 2020. The Times’s numbers are based on official confirmations from states, counties and the facilities themselves, as well as some data provided by the federal government. They include residents and, in cases in which reporting is available, employees of the facilities. Given the wide variability in the type of information available, the totals shown here almost certainly represent an undercount of the true toll. Infected people linked to nursing homes also die at a higher rate than the general population.

Assemblymember Ron Kim told the New York Post he believed Cuomo committed "obstruction of criminal investigations of health care offenses". He also said Cuomo had personally called him and told him he'd "destroy" him for criticizing his administration. When asked for comment on Kim's allegation, de Blasio called it "classic Andrew Cuomo" in an interview with Morning Joe on MSNBC. On February 12, 2021, more legislators criticized Cuomo, with 14 Democratic state senators joining the Republican Senate minority in calling for Cuomo's emergency powers to be rescinded.