New York Coronavirus: Nearly 10K Nursing Home Residents Have Died

NEW YORK — After New York Attorney General Letitia James released a preliminary report Thursday about her probe into coronavirus deaths in the state's nursing homes, state health officials responded with a new accounting of the total death toll for residents of nursing homes.

As Republican lawmakers called for investigations into the health department's data reporting, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker took issue with James calling it an undercount.

He said the health department has always publicly reported the number of COVID-19 fatalities in hospitals irrespective of the residence of the patient, and separately reported the number of fatalities within nursing home facilities — and has been clear about it.

"The word "undercount" implies there are more total fatalities than have been reported; this is factually wrong," he said in a statement. "In fact, the OAG report itself repudiates the suggestion that there was any "undercount" of the total death number."

The AG's report acknowledges in a footnote on page 71 that DOH was always clear that the data on its website pertains to in-facility deaths only, not residents' deaths outside of their nursing homes.

Zucker said that the department is still auditing the data about nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 after being sent to hospitals. However, he released preliminary findings.

From March 1, 2020 to Jan. 19, 2021, there were 9,786 confirmed fatalities of people in long-term care or skilled nursing facilities. That includes 5,957 deaths in nursing homes and 3,829 in a hospital.

"This represents 28 percent of New York's 34,742 confirmed fatalities — below the national average," Zucker said.

Nationally, the Kaiser Family Foundation lists 146,888 nursing home fatalities, 35 percent of the 423,519 total fatalities reported by the CDC in the United States to date, he said.

In his statement, Zucker drew attention to the core of the Attorney General's findings: that in many nursing homes, managers didn't take proper care of their residents or their staff.

"The report found that operators failed to properly isolate COVID-positive residents; failed to adequately screen or test employees; forced sick staff to continue working and caring for residents; failed to train employees in infection control protocols; and failed to obtain, fit, and train caregivers with PPE. These failures are in direct violation of Public Health Law and DOH guidance that every nursing home operator was aware of," Zucker said. "Violations of these protocols is inexcusable and operators will be held accountable. In fact, DOH has already issued 140 infection control citations and more than a dozen immediate jeopardy citations."

SEE: Most COVID-19 Fatalities At Least-Staffed Nursing Homes: NY AG