By TJV News
In a series of shocking revelations, the New York Post reported on Monday that the death rate of those confined in the city’s nursing homes has not only exponentially increased but the situation has gotten so egregious that the there is no room to store the bodies of those who have expired.
According to the Post report about 90 nursing home residents have died in the midst of the public health crisis that was sparked by the Coronavirus pandemic.
On Sunday, the New York State Health Department released its first report of deaths due to COVID-19 at city nursing homes. All together there were 1,064 virus related deaths, according to the Post report.
Leading the list in nursing home fatalities was the borough of Queens with 193 deaths, 158 dead in the Bronx, 136 dead in Brooklyn, 116 dead in Suffolk county, 115 in Nassau county and 113 in Westchester county, as was reported by the Post. The Department of Health reported that in hospitals across the state another 915 nursing home residents died of the Coronavirus.
While delivering his daily Coronavirus briefing in Albany, officials representing Governor Andrew Cuomo would not elaborate on nor give further details on the number of those who died at individual nursing homes because of privacy issues, as was reported by the Post.
At the 189-bed Chateau at Brooklyn Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in the Sheepshead Bay section of the borough, a worker there told the Post that “just over 40” residents had died there in the last three weeks. “They got several patients in isolation now and they are doing a whole lot of cleaning,” the worker told the Post.
For their part, the Chateau at Brooklyn said in a prepared statement that “no patient that passes away has ever been left in his or her bed.”
While leaving the venue on Monday, a nurse told the Post that “these places don’t have morgues. They were putting them downstairs but now a lot of them are being left in their rooms. What else can you do right now?” The nurse added, “It’s so sad to be taking blood from someone and the person in the next bed — next to them — is dead.”
The worker who was previously quoted in this article said that the deaths at the Chateau are fewer than the King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Cropsey Avenue in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, where the worker holds a second job. The worker told the Post that at the King David, “they’re closing in on 50” deaths.
Speaking to the NY Post, Brooklyn Councilman Mark Treyger said, “No one from the city or state has been able to confirm virus cases but clearly something is going on.” The 271-bed King David nursing home is in Treyger’s district. He further told the Post that he’d been “getting reports of ambulances coming in and out” of the facility.
In a report that appeared in Saturday’s New York Times, the Allure Group which owns the King David told the paper through a spokesman that the nursing and skilled care facility had confirmed cases of the virus there, but did not say that any deaths related to it had occurred.
Also shocking is that the first person who tested positive for the Coronavirus in New Jersey has been associated with the King David, according to the Post report.
WCBS reported that James Cai, a 32-year-old physician’s assistant at the King David said he thinks he caught the bug while attending a medical conference in early March at a Times Square hotel. “It happened so quick,” Cai told the outlet at the time. “The virus is everything. Diarrhea, watery eyes, shortness of breath, chest pain, you name it. High fever. … Every day is getting worse.” Cai has since recovered but before being hospitalized on March 3rd, he had treated 11 patients at the King David.
A reliable source close to the King David told the Jewish Voice on the condition of anonymity that the number of patient deaths at the nursing home far exceeds 50 and that the place is run in an abominable manner, with patients being intentionally neglected. Another source told the Jewish Voice that the King David gets paid by patient insurers for storing dead bodies in the event that they cannot be sent to funeral homes or local morgues.
Said the source: “If I had parents, grandparents or any relative or friend that was in a city nursing home right now, I would get them out of there immediately. These places are breeding grounds for this deadly viral infection and the manner in which the patients are treated is beyond deplorable. It is downright hideous; inhumane. No person, dead or alive should be treated like that.”
The NY Times report also indicated that at the Crown Heights Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in Brooklyn, more than 15 patients died of the virus and their bodies were placed in a makeshift morgue because funeral homes were way too overcrowded to handle them. The Crown Heights nursing home is one of Allure Group’s six operations.
According to their web site, Allure also owns the Hamilton Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, the Linden Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation on Linden Blvd in Brooklyn, the Bedford Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation on Heyward Street in Brooklyn, and the Harlem Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation on West 138th Street in Manhattan.
The New York Post reported that Chateau at Brooklyn is owned by CareRite Centers of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, which also owns 30 other nursing homes in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Tennessee.
According to a AP report on Sunday, more than 3,600 deaths nationwide have been linked to coronavirus outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, an alarming rise in just the past two weeks.
Reporters Bernard Condon and Randy Herschaft wrote that because the federal government has not been releasing a count of its own, the AP has kept its own running tally based on media reports and state health departments. The latest count of at least 3,621 deaths is up from about 450 deaths just 10 days ago.
But the true toll among the 1 million mostly frail and elderly people who live in such facilities is likely much higher, experts say, because most state counts don’t include those who died without ever being tested for COVID-19, as was indicated in the AP report.
The AP report also said that outbreaks in just the past few weeks have included one at a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Virginia, that has killed 42 and infected more than 100, another at nursing home in central Indiana that has killed 24 and infected 16, and one at a veteran’s home in Holyoke, Mass., that has killed 38, infected 88 and prompted a federal investigation. This comes weeks after an outbreak at a nursing home in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland that has so far claimed 43 lives.
The Allure Group which is a for-profit nursing home chain has been in the news before for dubious business dealings. It’s operators, Marvin Rubin and Joel Landau were under two years of city and state investigations because of the group’s closing of The Rivington House on Manhattan’s lower east side. The closing caused an uproar by community members of the LES, when the nursing home for seniors with HIV/AIDS was turned into luxury condominiums by the Allure Group.
The Jewish Voice previously reported that The Allure Group originally had purchased Rivington House in February of 2015 for $28 million, with promises that the facility would remain an operating nursing home. They then paid the Department of Citywide Administrative Services $16 million to adjust the deed on the facility. Prior to the decision to lift the deed restrictions on the nursing home by the city’s Department of Administrative Services, the site was limited to a not-for-profit residential health-care center.
Shortly after the purchase, the Allure Group, walked off with a $72 million pay day after they sold it to Slate, a real estate development company for the purpose of building luxury condominiums at the site, The Jewish Voice reported in 2016.
In January of 2018, the Jewish Voice reported that the Allure Group was poised to pursue its expansion of properties after the investigations concluded.
At the time, Crain’s reported that Allure, agreed to pay $2 million in penalties and charitable contributions to local nonprofits in a deal with former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Joel Landau who is the public face of the Allure Group, contributed $4950 to the De Blasio for mayor campaign in 2013. It was reported in the Daily News that James Capalino, an influential lobbyist had placed pressure on the DeBlasio administration to lift the deed requirements in order for one of his clients to turn Rivington House into luxury condos. Capalino was instrumental in acquiring $50,000 in donations to Mayor De Blasio.
The mayor claims he was misled by the company and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services changed the deed without consulting him. “This was a mistake. It was ridiculous, and I’ve said it a thousand times,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a town hall meeting on the Lower East Side. “Not only did we entirely change the rules around anything like this; now it will require a personal signature from me to happen, which did not happen in this case.”
