Cuomo’s office denies altering count of nursing home deaths

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office released a new statement Friday denying that any of Cuomo’s top advisers altered nursing home data to undercount Covid-19 deaths. 

The statement suggested that it was public information that Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents in hospitals and in-facility were counted separately. 

Beth Garvey, special counsel to Cuomo, said in a statement that "out of facility" Covid-19 deaths among nursing home residents were not counted in a July report on nursing home deaths because hospital deaths had not been verified. 

"A decision was made to use the data set that was reported by the place of death with firsthand knowledge of the circumstances, which gave a higher degree of comfort in its accuracy," Garvey explained. 

But according to The New York Times' reporting, the advisers specifically rewrote the report to keep private the totality of Covid-19 nursing home deaths. 

"There were repeated public statements acknowledging the out of facility deaths were not being listed as a subset of nursing home deaths stemming from concerns related to potential for double counting and consistency and accuracy," Garvey said. "COVID Taskforce members, including Melissa DeRosa, Linda Lacewell, and Jim Malatras, were involved in reviewing the draft report -- none of them changed any of the fatality numbers or ‘altered’ the fatality data."

She said the original state department of health report -- which included hospital deaths of nursing home residents in the total of nursing home deaths -- was fraught with "uncertainty." "The Chamber concluded that given the uncertainty of one data set that had not been verified, it did not need to be included, because it did not change the ultimate conclusions, as shown in the revised report which did include that additional data," Garvey continued. 

"There is no credible claim that the public or legislators did not know there was a subset of out of facility deaths that had been reported to DOH but was not yet disclosed," Garvey said, adding that the separate counts had been discussed in press briefings. 

"There is currently a review by the Department of Justice, and we are cooperating fully with that inquiry. Again, there was no undercount, as total deaths irrespective of location were always disclosed," she continued. 

On Thursday, a bombshell Wall Street Journal report revealed that top advisors to Cuomo influenced state health officials to remove, from a public report counting nursing home deaths, those who died in hospitals but lived in nursing homes when they contracted Covid-19. 

The state reported an original tally of 6,432 nursing-home resident deaths was significantly lower than the actual nursing-home death toll. State officials now place the nursing-home and long-term-care facility death toll in New York at more than 15,000 residents. 

On Thursday, Garvey claimed that "out-of-facility data" – meaning the deaths in hospitals – was omitted from the July report after the state Department of Health "could not confirm it had been adequately verified."

Cuomo has taken heat for his early-pandemic policy requiring nursing homes to take in Covid-positive patients. Cuomo has defended his administration’s actions regarding the nursing-home deaths, saying state officials had followed federal guidance and worked to manage hospital capacity as the virus spread.

On Feb. 10 of this year, Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, listed as one of the advisers who pushed for the change in the report, told state lawmakers that state officials withheld the nursing home death toll because "we froze" out of fear that the true numbers would "be used against us" by federal prosecutors. 

She said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the count in August because "right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football.

"He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes," DeRosa said, as first reported by the New York Post.