New York officials removed fuller tally of virus deaths in nursing homes
NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration insisted Friday that a quest for scientific accuracy, not political concerns, prompted members of his COVID-19 task force to ask the state health department to delete data last summer from a report on nursing home patients killed by the coronavirus.
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, citing documents and people with knowledge of the administration’s internal discussions, reported late Thursday that aides including secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa pushed state health officials to edit the July report so it counted only residents who died inside long-term care facilities, and not those who died later after being transferred to a hospital.
At the time, Cuomo was trying to deflect criticism that his administration hadn’t done enough to protect nursing home residents from the virus. About a third of the state’s nursing home fatalities were excluded from the report as a result of the change.
The revelations about the removal of the higher fatality number come as the Democrat also faces accusations he sexually harassed two former aides and a woman that he met at a wedding.
Cuomo had apologized Wednesday for acting “in a way that made people feel uncomfortable” but rejected calls for his resignation and said he would fully cooperate with the state attorney general’s investigation into the sexual harassment allegations.
Top Democrats in the state have said they want those investigations to conclude before they make a judgment about Cuomo’s conduct, but in the wake of Thursday night’s report, a few state lawmakers renewed calls for the governor to either resign or be ousted.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the allegations that Cuomo aides deleted data from the report was “troubling” and said the White House “certainly would support any outside investigation.”
The July nursing home report was released to rebut criticism of Cuomo over a March 25 directive that barred nursing homes from rejecting recovering coronavirus patients being discharged from hospitals. Some nursing homes complained at the time that the policy could spread the virus.
The report concluded the policy didn’t play a major role in spreading infection.
The state’s analysis was based partly on what officials acknowledged at the time was an imprecise statistic. The report said 6,432 people had died in the state’s nursing homes.
State officials acknowledged even then that the true number of deaths was higher because the report was excluding patients who died in hospitals.
But they declined at the time to give any estimate of that larger number of deaths, saying the numbers still needed to be verified. In fact, the original drafts of the report had included that number, then more than 9,200 deaths, until Cuomo’s aides said it should be taken out.