New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Image from Wikipedia.
Following is a summary of this AP article:
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing “blistering criticism” over an internal report that claimed a state directive that sent over 6,300 Coronavirus patients into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic was “not a significant factor” in some of the deadliest nursing home outbreaks in the United States.
Scientists, health care officials, and elected officials lambasted the report that was released last week for its flawed methodology and selective statistics.
Cuomo, “who has been praised for leadership that helped flatten the curve of infections in New York” has also been criticized over his order that told nursing homes that they could not refuse to accept recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals as long as they were “medically stable,” and his order even barred homes from testing if such patients still had the virus.
The supposed justification for the directive was to “free up hospital beds,” however relatives, patient advocates, and nursing home administrators are saying that it helped spread the virus among the state’s most vulnerable residents. [And note there was never a shortage of such hospital beds in New York!]
To date, nearly 6,500 deaths have been linked to Coronavirus in the state’s nursing homes, however the 33-page report claims “nursing home admissions from hospitals were not a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities.”
The report claims that the virus’ run through the nursing homes was caused by the 37,500 nursing home workers who became infected between mid-March and early June and unknowingly passed it on, and it says that 80% of of the nursing homes already had a confirmed or suspected case of Coronavirus among its residents or staff before the directive was issued.
Cuomo said in a news conference, “Ugly politics [were behind] this political conspiracy that the deaths in nursing homes were preventable. And now the report has the facts, and the facts tell the opposite story.”
However, several experts who reviewed the report said it had fatal flaws, including the fact that it never even addressed the effects of his directive.
Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, Houston, said the the report never addressed what happened to the dozens of nursing homes that were COVID-free before people with the virus were sent to them.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine, said “They really need to own the fact that they made a mistake, that it was never right to send COVID patients into nursing homes and that people died because of it.”
Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York School of Public Health, noted that the New York nursing home death toll also didn’t include nursing home residents who died at the hospital, which greatly undercounted the virus’ death toll.
New York’s Legislature plans to hold a joint hearing next month, with Republicans in Congress demanding that Cuomo turn over records related to his March 25 order and its effects.
Louisiana U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican leader of a House subcommittee on the COVID crisis, wrote in a letter to Cuomo last week: “Blame-shifting, name-calling and half-baked data manipulations will not make the facts or the questions they raise go away.”
When asked to respond, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said, “We’re used to Republicans denying science but now they are screeching about time, space and dates on a calendar to distract from the federal government’s many, many, embarrassing failures. No one is buying it.”