Team Cuomo suppressed data, changed report on nursing home deaths

Top advisers to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo were successful in coercing state health officials into altering a report on Covid-19 nursing home deaths, resulting in a significant undercount of the death toll, a report said.In the July report, New York health officials, at the Cuomo team’s behest, focused only on residents who died inside long-term-care facilities, leaving out those who had died in hospitals after becoming sick in nursing homes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing sources with knowledge of the report’s production.

In the July report, New York health officials, at the Cuomo team’s behest, focused only on residents who died inside long-term-care facilities, leaving out those who had died in hospitals after becoming sick in nursing homes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing sources with knowledge of the report’s production.

The report said 6,432 nursing-home residents had died — a significant undercount of the death toll attributed to the state’s most vulnerable population, the sources said. Before Team Cuomo’s intervention, the initial version of the report noted that nearly 10,000 nursing-home residents had died of covid in New York by July.

The Journal noted that “state officials now say more than 15,000 residents of nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities were confirmed or presumed to have died from Covid-19 since March of last year — counting both those who died in long-term-care facilities and those who died later in hospitals. That figure is about 50 percent higher than earlier official death tolls.”