NY AG says the Cuomo administration undercounted COVID nursing home deaths by 50% meaning the real number is more than 12,000 - but says there's 'no proof' his decision to send 6,326 infected patients BACK into the facilities caused more deaths

New York's Attorney General has accused the Cuomo administration of undercounting the number of people who died from COVID-19 in nursing homes by as much as 50 percent. 

In a report released on Thursday, AG Letitia James said that the New York State Health Department only ever counted people who physically died in nursing homes, rather than people who contracted the disease in nursing homes but then died in hospital too. 

According to the state department's data, 8,500 people died have from COVID in nursing homes to date. 

But when using the Attorney General's estimate that 50 percent more died, that number goes up to more than 12,000. 

The report also says that a March directive that nursing homes had to accept COVID-19 positive patients 'may' have contributed to a higher number of infection, but that it is impossible to directly attribute it to him. 

Instead, her office is focusing on whether the homes themselves are to blame for not containing the spread once the patients were already admitted. 

Twenty are now facing investigation from her office. They are not named in the report, which also say that understaffed facilities had higher COVID death rates. 

Cuomo did not schedule a press briefing on Thursday, as he does every other day. He has not commented on the report but the health commissioner released a lengthy statement defending the state, claiming they'd always counted the extra deaths but as hospital deaths and not nursing home ones.   

'The word "undercount" implies there are more total fatalities than have been reported; this is factually wrong,' Dr. Howard Zucker said. 

Between March and May - when Cuomo reversed the directive after widespread criticism -  6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to 310 nursing homes. 

Of the approximately 600 public nursing homes in New York, at least 323 homes had never had any infections until afterward the order but there is no data on which accepted COVID-19 patients and which didn't. 

A report by the New York Attorney General Letitia James has revealed the state undercounted COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%. The state and Gov. Cuomo has put the number at 8,500. By James' number, it's more than 12,000 

The report cites data from 62 nursing homes across New York. The state only ever relayed the number of people who died physically in nursing homes and not nursing home residents who died in hospital which inflates the death toll dramatically

James does not, in her report, criticize Cuomo personally and does not directly attribute the high deaths to it. 

All the report says is that the decision 'may' have contributed to it.  

COVID AND NURSING HOME TIMELINE IN NEW YORK

March 25: Gov. Cuomo issues a directive that all nursing homes must accept COVID-19 patients and care for them if hospitals can't 

May 11: Cuomo reverses the decision amid widespread outrage

July 6: Cuomo admin publishes internal report revealing 6,300 COVID patients were sent back into nursing homes

They claimed that asymptomatic nursing home staff were to blame for the spread though 

August 20: The AP publishes a damning report about nursing home deaths in New York and says the number may be as high as 11,000  

October: Cuomo publishes book about his response to the pandemic

Jan 2021: AG releases her report into nursing homes, saying 20 are under investigation for failing to meet standards 

'While additional data and analysis would be required to ascertain the effect of such admissions in individual facilities, these admissions may have contributed to increased risk of nursing home resident infection, and subsequent fatalities (whether due to actual transmission of infection from new residents to incumbent residents, or due to the facilities’ poor self-assessment during the admission process that was followed by failure to provide appropriate care to that patient or other residents.)' the report reads.  

Instead, she says her office is now investigating 20 nursing homes which may not have met safety and cleanliness requirements. 

Cuomo's decision to send thousands of COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes has been widely blamed for the high number of deaths among elderly people in New York.

In March, a directive was issued that said nursing homes had to accept the patients, even if they were COVID positive, and that they had to find a way to care for them while keeping other residents and staff safe from the virus.

He later reversed it but between March and May, 6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to nursing homes. 

In May, the AP published the first report that New York was undercounting nursing home deaths and the AG's office launched an investigation. 

Every other state has counted both. 

Cuomo has resisted criticism for the directive and he has never apologized for it. 

The Governor's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday morning. 

The report points out that while widely criticized, the March 25 directive was in line with the federal guidance that had been given. 

The point of the directive, from the state's view, was to ensure nursing homes were up to scratch.

But nursing homes and the families of their residents angrily demanded to know why COVID-19 positive patients were being admitted in the first place, especially when healthy visitors were not allowed. 

The report from James' office seems neither criticizes or excuses Cuomo for it. 

'Many nursing home industry and other commentators have criticized DOH’s March 25 guidance as a directive that nursing homes had to accept COVID-19 patients who were infectious.45 

'At the same time, the March 25 guidance was consistent with the CMS guidance on March 4 that said nursing homes should accept residents they would have normally admitted, even if from a hospital with COVID-19, and that patients from hospitals can be transferred to nursing homes if the nursing homes have the ability to adhere to infection prevention and control recommendations,' it says.  

At the time, recovered nursing home patients were taking up much needed hospital beds because they were delays in them receiving testing results back and nursing homes were not accepting anyone from the hospital unless they'd been given a negative COVID test. 

New York City Fire Department Emergency Medical Technicians wearing personal protective equipment lift a man after moving him from a nursing home into an ambulance on April 16, 2020

The hospital system in New York never collapsed. 

There were individual hospitals that became overwhelmed but the system, overall, held. 

The field hospitals set up by Cuomo at the USNS Comfort and Javits Center were never used to their full capacity. They weren't set up until after the March 25 directive. 

The New York State Health Commissioner said the report was not damning, and 'confirmed' that they'd always counted all of deaths just not as nursing home fatalities. 

'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 word "undercount" implies there are more total fatalities than have been reported; this is factually wrong. In fact, the OAG report itself repudiates the suggestion that there was any "undercount" of the total death number,' Dr Howard Zucker said.  

Zucker also said the report highlights the wrongdoings of the nursing homes, and he raised the fact that 13 states do not report nursing home deaths. 

'Ultimately, the OAG's report demonstrates that the recurring problems in nursing homes and by facility operators resulted from a complete abdication by the Trump administration of its duty to manage this pandemic,' he said.

'Layers of hell.' The Brooklyn nursing home ravaged by COVID-19

Among the dozens of nursing homes ravaged by COVID-19 was one in Brooklyn where 55 had died by last April.

Figures released this week gave a grim sense of the extent to which the virus has ravaged nursing home communities across the country. More than 8,000 deaths have been reported so far nationwide and with inadequate testing and only self-reporting, many fear this could represent just a fraction of the true toll.

Thirty-seven-year old mother-of-one, Mina Clarke, spent three weeks at Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, one of the worst hit homes, while recovering from surgery after breaking her arm and leg in a fall. 

Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, New York, begged to move its sick residents to the Navy hospital ship the USNS Comfort weeks ago - but was denied

Clarkes told of an experience that has left her traumatized, angry and sick; forced to self-isolate from her husband and five-year-old son and struggling to cope with continued recovery.

She said: 'It's like going through different layers of hell. You go in there because of your personal pain and then you have the psychological observing your surroundings.

'You are literally watching people in agony day in and day out, and you don't see any family and you don't have any access to the real world.'

CEO of the Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn, Donny Tuchman, pleaded with New York Health Department officials in an email on April 9, asking if there was 'a way for us to send our suspected covid patients' to either the Comfort or the hospital built inside the Jacob Javits Convention Center. 

At the time of the email, only 134 of the 1,000 beds at the Javits Center were being used, and the Comfort had only 62 patients on board the ship that had the capacity to treat 500.   

'I was told those facilities were only for hospitals' Tuchman told the New York Post.