New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s March 25 guidance directing nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive residents was linked to over 1,000 additional deaths, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog group.
“Statewide, the findings imply that COVID-positive new admissions between late March and early May, which numbered 6,327, were associated with several hundred and possibly more than 1,000 additional resident deaths,” the report read.
The March 25 advisory has embroiled Cuomo in a scandal over reports that his administration purposely withheld the true death toll due to COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. Cuomo amended the guidance on May 10, prohibiting hospitals from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they have tested negative for COVID-19.
CUOMO ACCUSED OF COVERING UP NURSING HOME DEATHS TO GET BETTER TREATMENT UNDER BIDEN
Nursing homes were also prohibited from requiring that prospective residents provide a negative test result as proof that they were coronavirus-free.
“Further, admitting any number of new COVID-positive patients was associated with an average of 4.2 additional deaths per facility,” the Empire Center found.
The effect of the Cuomo administration guidance was felt most acutely in upstate New York, the report said. The disproportionate effect on that region’s long-term care facilities could be due to the relatively low rate of new cases there at the time, “so that even a single exposure would have had a larger impact on the level of risk.”
Charges of a cover-up came after a report that Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa told state Democrats in a private phone call that Cuomo administration officials withheld the actual number of nursing home residents who have died out of fear that the actual number of fatalities would “be used against us.”
The Department of Justice under the Trump administration had just launched an investigation in August into the possible conspiracy to conceal the true death toll, which DeRosa admitted “played a very large role into this.”
Cuomo responded defensively Friday to reporting that his office undercounted the deaths, telling reporters that “it is a lie to say any numbers were inaccurate … Total deaths were always reported to nursing homes and hospitals.”
He added that his administration did not withhold the data from either the state Legislature or the Department of Justice.
“New York state legislators requested information … We said we would pause the state legislators request because we gave the DOJ precedence,” Cuomo said Friday. “We told them that we paused the state request. They were told, and they knew.”
The Empire Center for Public Policy first tried to get the full accounting of deaths in nursing homes in August when it filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the data. The center received the data on Feb. 3, just a few days after New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, issued her report on the undercount.
She found that the death count may be 50% higher than what the Cuomo administration had reported. The attorney general’s findings included the number of deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, which Cuomo’s administration excluded in its tally of deaths in nursing homes.
Just one day before James released the findings of her investigation, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker confirmed that the state withheld data showing 3,829 additional deaths within hospital settings. The tally has ballooned to nearly 15,000 deaths.
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Amid mounting criticism, Cuomo has argued that his office was just following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet, CDC guidance said that only “medically ready” COVID-19 patients should be discharged to nursing homes and only if the facilities are able to properly care for the patients. The administration has also argued that there was fear that hospitals in New York City, the first COVID-19 epicenter in the United States, would be overwhelmed with the number of patients to treat.
“The coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc in nursing homes across the country and around the world,” the report read. “this analysis indicates that the guidance may have made a bad situation worse — and points to the need for further research to determine the best policy before the state faces another pandemic.”
