State health officials on Thursday released a fuller accounting of the number of nursing home residents who have died during the COVID-19 pandemic after an investigation by Attorney General Letitia James found the official tally may have been undercounted by as much as 50%.
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, in a lengthy statement that served as a rebuttal to James's report, disclosed 9,786 people living in long-term care facilities and nursing homes died between March 1, 2020 and January 19 of this year.
Of those deaths, 5,957 people died in nursing facilities and 3,829 died in a hospital. The breakout of where those deaths had occurred is significant, given state health officials had not disclosed the two numbers until Thursday, hours after James's report was released.
"This represents 28% of New York's 34,742 confirmed fatalities — below the national average," Zucker said.
The state's count takes into consideratio confirmed COVID deaths and other tallies have differed.
Zucker's statement on the one hand sought to refute much of James's investigative report, which has led to lawmakers calling for his resignation and calls for additional hearings in the coming weeks.
"The OAG's report is only referring to the count of people who were in nursing homes but transferred to hospitals and later died," Zucker said, referring to the Office of Attorney General. "The OAG suggests that all should be counted as nursing home deaths and not hospital deaths even though they died in hospitals."
But at the same time, the statement seized on portions of the report that backed up public statements made by Zucker and Gov. Andrew Cuomo — including the politically charged criticism that nursing home deaths spike after a March 25 order required the facilities to not turn away COVID-positive patients.
"The OAG report also found no evidence that DOH's March 25 advisory memo resulted in additional fatalities in nursing homes," Zucker said. "In fact, a DOH report, which the OAG cites in its own review, found that 98 percent of nursing homes already had COVID in their facilities prior to a patient being admitted there from a hospital."
And Zucker pointed to problems within nursing homes themselves for falling short on state-mandated reporting requirements.
"Nursing home operators must report accurate information to DOH or face civil or criminal penalties, and to date DOH has already fined numerous facilities for violating that obligation," he said.
Cuomo has said criticism of his handling of nursing homes during the pandemic has been largely a Republican-backed effort. The James report, however, reminiscent of aggressive reports then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a decade ago, comes from a statewide elected Democrat.
Zucker's statement also sought to refute criticisms that have dogged the nursing home issue surrounding transparency, pointing to the practices of a dozen other states.
"It is worth noting that there remain 13 states that report no information on nursing home fatalities and only nine states, including New York, report nursing home fatalities that are 'presumed' COVID and not confirmed COVID," Zucker said.