It’s a question people from both sides of the aisle are asking – why won’t Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Department of Health release the total number of nursing home patients in New York who have died from Covid-19?
We know that close to 6,700 hundred patients have died inside nursing homes, but the state refuses to say how many left a nursing home and died in a hospital.
It was 107 days ago that the NYS Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said he would reveal that number, but that has never happened.
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The refusal to release the number has become a bipartisan concern – many Democratic lawmakers have questioned why this Democratic administration is withholding the information. The Empire Center for Public Policy is suing New York State to get the information, and like CBS 6 has filed a freedom of information request to get the numbers.
MORE: 50 Days later: Still waiting on number of nursing home patient deaths in NY
So how just how hard is it to get these numbers? Dr. Zucker has a huge team to gather and tabulate and re-tabulate numbers like the ones we’re talking about. There is an official reporting system for the nursing homes. It’s called HERDS – the Health Emergency Response Data System. Despite all that, the State insists it can’t come up with an accurate count yet.
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I found that with just my computer and telephone, gathering numbers wasn’t all that difficult.
Within an hour I was able to determine that at Nathan Littauer Hospital in Gloversville there have been 8 COVID-19 deaths. Officials there tell me two were patients from the community and 6 were from a nursing home – the Fulton Center.
In Columbia County I simply checked with the County Health Department – at the Grand at Barnwell nursing home there have been 20 COVID-19 deaths – one inside the facility and 19 at a hospital. At the Pine Haven nursing home there have been 12 deaths – four inside the facility, 8 at a hospital.
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Officials in Albany County tell me at the county-run Shaker Place facility, there have been 15 deaths – 10 inside the nursing home and 5 at a hospital.
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When asked about the refusal to release the numbers, the NYS Department of Health released this statement –
“DOH is displaying an unprecedented amount of data in real-time rather than in the traditional timeframe, which often takes months in order to collect and validate. You want accurate numbers, and we want to provide accurate numbers to you. We are taking all the appropriate steps to do so. “
We will stay on the story until we get you the numbers. Lawmakers and Empire Center officials say the numbers can be incredibly useful in helping to learn what happened in nursing homes and how to handle the spread of the virus going forward.