By Ilana Siyance
On Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally released the complete list of New York State COVID-19 nursing home deaths. Following months of prodding, a Supreme Court judge ordered New York State’s Department of Health to comply with a Freedom of Information request. As reported by the Daily Mail, in compliance, the Governor’s updated list reveals 4,000 more deaths than the original released figure of 8,711.
The new COVID-19 death toll for NYS nursing home and assisted living residents is officially 12,743, which is 50 percent higher than the state had admitted till now. The new figure also includes those who died after being transferred from a nursing home to a hospital due to the novel Coronavirus. The new detailed list, with numbers for each nursing facility in the state, highlights that the highest number of deaths occurred in Suffolk County, which had 655 confirmed deaths and 267 presumed. The second highest number of COVID-19 nursing home casualties occurred in Erie County in Western New York, with 621 confirmed deaths and nine presumed.
The single nursing home that fared worse was Harris Hill Nursing Facility in Erie County, outside of Buffalo. As per the state’s figures, 117 residents from Harris Hill Nursing Facility were confirmed to have died of COVID-19, and 19 more died after being transferred to a hospital, and two more died presumably from COVID-19. Other homes with tragic results include the Father Baker Manor in Buffalo, the Absolut Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in East Aurora. In Queens, the Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehab had 83 residents who died of COVID-19, plus 32 who died in the hospital after transfer.
Thursday’s new tally puts the state of New York in 13th place, for the highest COVID-19 nursing home mortality rate in the U.S., as per an Empire Center analysis. With the previous numbers, NYS was at 35th place. The calculation is made by evaluating the number of deaths relative to the percentage of the nursing home population for 2019.
For six months, law makers have been trying to pry the number out of the state’s Health Commissioner Howard Zucker. In January, Attorney General Letitia James released a report blasting the state and finding that the Cuomo administration misled the public about the actual number of COVID fatalities in nursing facilities, and that the state figure was undercounting deaths by some 50 percent. The Daily Mail reported that days after the AG’s report, Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ruled, in a 16-page decision, that the DOH must submit the full records to the Empire Center within five business days and pay their legal costs.
