New York drastically undercounted nursing home COVID-19 deaths, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James's investigation results on Thursday.
Significant discrepancies in the COVID-19 death toll
The investigation results likely revive controversy over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 nursing home policies. The report was compiled after surveying nursing homes in New York, identifying significant and consistent discrepancies between the official COVID-19 death counts by the Department of Health and those the attorney general's investigators count.
According to Forbes, the office said in a statement that among the findings, a larger number of nursing home residents died from the coronavirus than the state Department of Health's published nursing home data reflected. The result revealed that the official death counts might have been underreported by as much as 50%.
In August, the Associated Press first reported the investigation's data claiming that the Department of Health COVId-19 death toll did not include residents who died in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes. The Department of Health releases different data from what was reported to the agency by nursing home facilities. Therefore it includes multiple examples of nursing homes undercounting deaths to the Department of Health.
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An executive summary of the report says a facility reported confirmed and six presumed COVID-19 deaths. But the facility reported to the Office of the Attorney General a total of 27 COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes and 13 hospital deaths, showing 29 deaths in discrepancy.
The investigation found several long-term care facilities that failed to comply with the infection control policies, such as isolation of COVId-19 positive residents and employees who were unaware they were contagious in spreading the virus in the facilities, contrary to DOH's July report.
NY Health Commissioner blasted the COVID-19 death discrepancies report
In response to the report on Thursday, New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker noted in a statement that all COVID19 deaths are being accounted for based on the location they took place and not the victim's origin. "The word 'undercount' implies there are more total fatalities than have been reported; this is factually wrong," Zucker added.
Zucker claims that his office agreed with James that the number of people transferred from nursing homes to a hospital is a crucial data point, and the DOH is auditing the data from nursing homes.
CBS News reported New York's health department agreed the Attorney General's findings of wrongdoing on certain nursing facilities "are reprehensible," and DOH continues following up all allegations of misconduct by operators. The Department also actively works in partnership with the OAF in enforcing the law correctly.
