Democratic and Republican state lawmakers grilled New York’s top health official Monday about the steep, though ultimately unknown death toll at the state’s nursing homes amid the coronavirus pandemic. Members of the Democratic-led Legislature are holding hearings geared at understanding why and how the pandemic took root in New York nursing homes. Lawmakers, who plan to hold another hearing next Monday, said they want to pass better policies to protect nursing home residents and staffers if infections surge again. The state Department of Health reports nearly 6,600 residents died at New York’s nursing homes and adult-facilities, including 6,400 nursing home residents. The state has not disclosed how many nursing home residents died at hospitals, or how many residents have been infected with COVID-19. A June report found that at least a quarter of the COVID-19 deaths in the United States were among nursing home residents. Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised March 2 that his administration would take a “special effort” to protect nursing homes, and later described the spread of COVID-19 through nursing homes as “fire through dry grass.” “It’s now up to the Legislature to determine who lit the match and figure out why and how the fire fanned out,” said State Sen. James Skoufis, chairman of the Committee on Investigations and Government Operations. State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker defended the administration’s response Monday and said officials were worried about projections from global and federal public health experts that New York could have faced a surge of over 100,000 COVID-19 patients at once. He defended his agency’s recent report, which has been panned by academics, claiming that the original March 25 directive was not a “significant factor” in virus outbreaks. But as the number of infections have plunged and plateaued in recent weeks in New York, lawmakers grew frustrated Monday as Zucker declined to provide key data points sought by Democrats and Republicans, including a rough estimate of how many nursing home residents have died in hospitals of COVID-19. “I will not provide information that I have not ensured is absolutely accurate,” Zucker said. “This is too big an issue and it’s too serious an issue.” Since March, Cuomo and his administration have been tight-lipped about the extent of deaths and infections among residents of the state’s 613 nursing homes, and the governor’s declined to admit any missteps. The state stopped releasing the total number of confirmed cases at nursing homes in mid-April, and didn’t release the number of deaths at individual nursing homes until early May. At an April 12 press conference, Cuomo said that New York hadn’t seen a “significant uptick” in deaths at nursing homes. He said health officials had responded to “little clusters.” His administration now acknowledges deaths at nursing homes peaked April 8. The governor has used recent press conferences and national media appearances to dismiss any questions about the state’s virus response at nursing homes as Republican-driven “politics” and lament the lack of a European travel ban until March 13. New York gave hospitals and nursing homes sweeping protection from lawsuits under a provision that hospital lobbyists said they drafted. And on March 25, the state prevented nursing homes from denying the admission of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 or requiring patients to be tested. The Department of Health eventually required nursing homes […]
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