Cuomo Administration Hid Nursing Home Covid Deaths Longer Than Previously Thought: NYT

An explosive report published Wednesday in The New York Times reveals that aides to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) withheld information on nursing home patient deaths from Covid-19 longer than previously believed.

Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state’s own health officials, including the commissioner, Howard Zucker, from releasing the true death toll to the public or sharing it with state lawmakers, these interviews and documents showed.

A scientific paper, which incorporated the data, was never published. An audit of the numbers by a top Cuomo aide was finished months before it became publicly known. Two letters, drafted by the Health Department and meant for state legislators, were never sent.

The actions coincided with the period in which Mr. Cuomo was pitching and then writing a book on the pandemic, with the assistance of his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and others.

Cuomo has repeatedly faced criticism over a directive he issued early in the pandemic on March 25, 2020 that prohibited nursing homes from refusing admission to patients with Covid-19. Under this policy, more than 9,000 Covid-positive patients were admitted to hundreds of nursing homes across the state early in the pandemic. That number is 40% higher than what had initially been released by the New York State Department of Health, according to the Associated Press.

In the ensuing months, the Cuomo administration withheld data relating to the impact the directive may have had on the spread of the virus in nursing homes across New York state. Many have blamed the policy for the high number of deaths among nursing home patients, which officially numbered around 6,200 as of last July. By January, the official number was 8,505.

There was a problem with these figures, however: they did not include nursing home patients who’d been transported to hospitals and died of Covid-19 in those facilities. According to a January report released by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Cuomo administration undercounted nursing home patient deaths by as much as 50%. The administration subsequently admitted this was the case when it revealed that some 12,743 nursing home residents died of Covid-19 in the state.

Wednesday’s report shows that the Cuomo administration had known since the spring of 2020 that it was undercounting nursing home deaths. A lawyer for the governor’s office said the reason the accurate numbers weren’t released far earlier was because officials didn’t believe the data was reliable. He called concerns about the undercount “overblown.”

In late August, Donald Trump’s administration requested data from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, whose actions it said “may have resulted in deaths of elderly nursing home residents.” Aides in the Cuomo administration interpreted the request as an attempt to embarrass the Democratic governors of those states. The Times indicates the request caused Cuomo’s aides to commit even further to not release the data. DeRosa, the governor’s top aide, said as much during a Zoom call with lawmakers in February, saying “basically, we froze.”

Facing mounting pressure to provide accurate information, Cuomo bristled at reporters last October. “On the numbers, there’s a lot of politics being played.”

The next day, Crown Publishing Group published Cuomo’s book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is believed the book deal netted Cuomo more than $4 million.