NEW YORK (AP) – Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration on Friday insisted that a search for scientific rigor, not political concerns, prompted members of his COVID-19 task force to ask the state health department for data. remove 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 Governor Melissa DeRosa, were pushing state health officials to edit the July report so that it only counted residents who died in institutions for long-term care, and not those who later died after being transferred to a hospital.
At the time, Cuomo tried to fend off criticism that his government had not done enough to protect nursing home residents from the virus. As a result of the change, about a third of nursing home fatalities in the state were excluded from the report.
The revelations about the removal of the higher death rate come as the Democrat is also accused of sexually harassing two former aides and a woman he met at a wedding.
Cuomo had apologized on Wednesday because he acted “in a way that made people feel uncomfortable,” but rejected calls for his resignation, saying he would cooperate fully with the Attorney General’s investigation into the allegations of sexual harassment. Federal investigators are investigating the way his administration handles nursing home data.
Top Democrats in the state have said they want those investigations to be completed before passing judgment on Cuomo’s behavior, but in the wake of Thursday night’s report, some state legislators have again called for the resignation or becoming the governor. dropped off.
And Cuomo has hidden the numbers. Impeach, ”tweeted Ron Kim, a member of the Queens Assembly, who said Cuomo bullied him for criticizing Cuomo’s way of withholding nursing home records.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday that the allegations that Cuomo is helping to remove data from the report were “troubling” and said the White House “would certainly support any outside investigation.”
The July nursing home report was released to refute criticism of Cuomo over a March 25 directive that banned nursing homes from refusing convalescent coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. At the time, some nursing homes complained that the policy could help spread the virus.
The report concluded that policies did not play a major role in the spread of infections.
The state’s analysis was based in part on what officials at the time recognized as an inaccurate statistic. According to the report, 6,432 people had died in the state’s nursing homes.
State officials even then acknowledged that the actual number of deaths was higher because the report excluded patients who died in hospitals.
But they declined to estimate that greater number of deaths at the time, saying the numbers had yet to be verified.
In fact, the report’s original drafts had included that number and subsequently more than 9,200 deaths, until Cuomo’s aides said it should be removed.
State officials on Thursday urged the changes to be made due to concerns about accuracy. The administration initially released data on how many nursing home residents died in both hospitals and nursing homes, but quietly stopped in early May.
Although early versions of the report included the deaths outside the facility, the COVID task force was not convinced that the data had been verified against hospital records and therefore the final report only used data on deaths in the facility, which the report stated. were unveiled, “Health Department spokesman Gary Holmes said.
The governor’s office did not respond to questions from The Associated Press about whether Cuomo himself was involved in removing the higher death rate from the report.
Scientists, healthcare professionals and elected officials attacked the report at the time due to flawed methodology and selective statistics that circumvented the actual impact of the Directive.
The administration refused to release more complete data for months. A court order and report from the state attorney general in January forced the state to recognize that the death toll of nursing home residents was higher than the census previously made public.
DeRosa told lawmakers earlier this month that the government failed to turn the data over to lawmakers in August over concerns that the information would be used against them by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“In fact we were petrified because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Justice Department or what we were going to give you, what we start to say would be used to us while we were not sure knew if there was going to be an investigation, ”DeRosa said.
Cuomo and his health commissioner recently defended the March directive, saying it was the best option at the time to help free up much-needed beds in the state hospitals. And they have argued that community spread is the biggest risk factor for nursing homes, and that most hospital patients treated for COVID-19 are unlikely to be contagious once they arrived.
“We made the right public health decision at the time. And faced with the same facts, we would make the same decision again, ”said Health Commissioner Howard Zucker February 19.
The state now recognizes that at least 15,000 long-term care residents died, compared to a figure of 8,700 published in late January, not including residents who died after being transferred to hospitals.