Advisers to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) pushed state health officials to alter a public report from July over COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, people with knowledge of the report’s production told The Wall Street Journal.
The report focused only on residents who died inside long-term care facilities and didn’t include those who died in hospitals after becoming sick in nursing homes. The report said that 6,432 nursing home residents had died, which was an undercount of the death toll, the sources told the newspaper.
The report in question came as a result of a study from the New York State Department of Health (DOH) into the impact of a March directive which stated that nursing homes couldn’t refuse to readmit residents or admit new residents from hospitals simply due to a COVID-19 diagnosis.
According to the newspaper, the report shifted the blame of the virus’s spread to staff who brought the virus with them to work.
The initial version of the report included data on deaths of nursing home residents inside of homes, as well as deaths that occurred in hospitals, the Journal reported. However, members of Cuomo’s COVID-19 task force, which included Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, requested that the report downplay the role of the March directive, which was rejected.
According to the Journal, the published report said the directive was “not a significant factor in nursing home fatalities.”
Garvey told the Journal that task force members didn’t request the change to the report, but were “very cautious to not overstate the statistical analysis presented in the report. Overall, ensuring public confidence in the conclusion was the ultimate goal of DOH and the Covid task force in issuing the report.”
The Journal’s report comes as Cuomo faces mounting calls for his resignation amid his handling of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, as well as allegations of inappropriate behavior from staff members.
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Cuomo advisers pushed state officials to alter COVID-19 nursing homes report: WSJ https://t.co/g0Sfng8TwW pic.twitter.com/6TeG4LQXcu
— The Hill (@thehill) March 5, 2021
Aides to Andrew Cuomo rewrote a nursing home report in June 2020 to hide the high death toll, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times. The intervention came as Cuomo "was starting to write a book on his pandemic achievements."https://t.co/PEOqS7id9I
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) March 5, 2021
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