AG Report: COVID-19 Deaths In NY Nursing Homes Are Dramatically Undercounted

 

GOTHAMIST

BY GWYNNE HOGAN, WNYC

JAN. 28, 2021 3:58 P.M.

 • 10 COMMENTS

Emergency medical workers arrive at Cobble Hill Health Center in Brooklyn in April of 2020. The nursing home had the highest number of presumed coronavirus-related deaths in the city. JOHN MINCHILLO/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK

New York state nursing homes are experiencing 50 percent more deaths than figures reported by the state health department, according to a report released Thursday by Attorney General Letitia James. Separately, health officials published new data showing that medical staff at these facilities appear to be passing on COVID-19 vaccines despite being first in line.

Since the start of the pandemic, the New York State Department of Health has reported 8,711 deaths among residents at long-term care facilities. That number accounts only for the people who died at the facilities themselves. If a resident with COVID-19 symptoms was sent to a hospital and passed away there, they were not counted in the long-term facilities' death toll, as Gothamist reported in May of last year.

The attorney general’s report took a detailed look at deaths in 62 facilities and found vast discrepancies. State health officials reported seven COVID-19 deaths at one facility, but James’s investigation said 31 fatalities should have been counted under the broader definition. Another showed 11 deaths in health department records, when in truth, 27 of its residents had died.

While the state’s overall numbers account for people who died in hospitals, it has been impossible to estimate the toll of the outbreaks tied to certain nursing homes. The state still does not publicly report COVID-19 infections at nursing homes.

Susan Dooha, the executive director of the Center for the Independence of the Disabled, New York, called the report’s findings devastating but not surprising. “We knew that these problems exist, she said.

59-year-old Anayancy Houseman spent days searching for information about COVID-19 outbreaks at Staten Island nursing homes after her 84-year-old mother, who had been living alone and diligently isolating throughout the pandemic, fell and needed rehabilitation services.

“I was very worried about what to do,” Houseman said. “If I had known that they had had deaths or that they had had outbreaks, me and my sister would have probably made the decision to let my mother go home.”

Her mother moved into Silver Lake Specialized Rehabilitation and Care Center, where she ultimately caught the coronavirus. She was sent to Staten Island University Hospital, where she died in early December.

The state had reported two COVID-19 deaths of residents at Silver Lake, but Houseman’s mother wasn’t one of them. “I put my trust in this place, that she was going to be taken care of,” Houseman said.

These revelations arrived alongside an update to the state’s COVID-19 vaccine tracker, which is now reporting immunization rates among residents in these facilities and their nursing staff.

Residents are much more likely to accept the vaccine, with three of every four in the state already vaccinated. In contrast, less than half of New York’s skilled nurses have been immunized against COVID-19.

The city ranks lowest in vaccination rate among nursing home staff, while the North Country region is best. This latter region is also recording the highest level of vaccine uptake for residents.

State lawmakers of both parties condemned the AG report’s finding, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt even called for the resignation of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker.

“The Department of Health has betrayed the public trust,” he said. “To repair that broken trust, I am calling on Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to resign.”

In a lengthy statement in response, Zucker reiterated that the state counts the additional deaths with hospital deaths overall, blamed the federal government for a lack of unilateral reporting procedures, and said that nursing homes that were not following state guidelines would be held accountable.

“This is still an ongoing crisis and we will continue deploying every resource possible to ensuring the health and safety of every single New Yorker,” Zucker said.

COVID-19 battered nursing homes during last spring’s peak. At the time, some facilities had reported feeling abandoned by the state, unable to access stockpiles of personal protective gear, testing supplies, and backup staff, which were prioritized for hospitals. And family members trying to connect with sick loved ones, or learn about outbreaks that might impact their loved ones, have often been left in the dark. So far, these centers have been shielded from liability for their pandemic actions, and James is calling for these protections to be removed.

James is calling on the state to report the additional deaths, improve oversight on infection control, and find ways to boost staffing. The Attorney General’s report found other serious failures to provide adequate care in nursing homes during the height of the pandemic, such as failing to isolate residents who tested positive for COVID-19, not enough tests for employees, and forcing sick staff to work.

“Nursing homes residents and workers deserve to live and work in safe environments,” James said. “As the pandemic and our investigations continue, it is imperative that we understand why the residents of nursing homes in New York unnecessarily suffered at such an alarming rate.”

Editor's note: This story was updated to include a statement from Howard Zucker.

The tally of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. has surpassed 100,000. UPDATES

Just over four months after the government confirmed the first known case, more than 100,000 people who had the coronavirus have died in the United States, according to a New York Times tally.

The toll exceeds the number of U.S. military combat fatalities in every conflict since the Korean War. It matches the toll in the United States of the 1968 flu pandemic, and it is approaching the 116,000 killed in another flu outbreak a decade before that.

The pandemic is on track to be the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the 1918 flu pandemic, in which about 675,000 Americans died.

As the nation neared the milestone, President Trump flew to Florida on Wednesday in the hopes of watching the first launch of NASA astronauts into orbit from the United States in nearly a decade. But threatening weather led the launch to be postponed until Saturday at the earliest.

 Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, released a video on Wednesday in which he expressed grief and charged that “this is a fateful milestone we should have never reached.” He faulted the administration for not enacting social-distancing measures sooner, which researchers said would have saved thousands of lives.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump had taken aim on Twitter at those who would question his response. “The Radical Left Lamestream Media, together with their partner, the Do Nothing Democrats, are trying to spread a new narrative that President Trump was slow in reacting to Covid 19,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “Wrong, I was very fast, even doing the Ban on China long before anybody thought necessary!”

Though the numbers of new cases and deaths have begun trending downward, health experts warn of a possible resurgence as lockdowns are lifted.

The daily death toll in New York, the hardest-hit state, fell this week to levels not seen since March.
Most statisticians and public health experts, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, say the death toll is probably far higher than official counts. People who haven’t been tested are dying at home and at nursing homes, and early this year some coronavirus deaths were probably misidentified.

  Riot police officers clashed with protesters in Hong Kong on Wednesday.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

China Approves Plan to Rein In Hong Kong, Defying Worldwide Outcry

Beijing ordered that a new law be written to extend many of mainland China’s security practices to Hong Kong, creating broad powers to quash unrest.

NY TIMES

China officially has the broad power to quash unrest in Hong Kong, as the country’s legislature on Thursday nearly unanimously approved a plan to suppress subversion, secession, terrorism and seemingly any acts that might threaten national security in the semiautonomous city.

As Beijing hashes out the specifics of the national security legislation in the coming weeks, the final rules will help determine the fate of Hong Kong, including how much of the city’s autonomy will be preserved or how much Beijing will tighten its grip.

Early signals from the Chinese authorities point to a crackdown once the law takes effect, which is expected by September.

Activist groups could be banned. Courts could impose long jail sentences for national security violations. China’s feared security agencies could operate openly in the city.

Even Hong Kong’s chief executive appeared to hint this week that certain civil liberties might not be an enduring feature of Hong Kong life. “We are a very free society, so for the time being, people have the freedom to say whatever they want to say,” said the chief executive, Carrie Lam, noting, “Rights and freedoms are not absolute.”

The prospect of a national security law has prompted an immediate pushback in Hong Kong, where protesters are once again taking to the streets. The international community, too, has warned against infringing on the city’s civil liberties.

The Trump administration signaled Wednesday that it was likely to end some or all of the U.S. government’s special trade and economic relations with Hong Kong because of China’s move. The State Department no longer considers Hong Kong to have significant autonomy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, a condition for maintaining the trade status.

Larry Kramer, Playwright and Outspoken AIDS Activist, Dies at 84

He sought to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency and foresaw that it could kill millions regardless of sexual orientation.

Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and ’90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84.

His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Kramer had weathered illness for much of his adult life. Among other things he had been infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, contracted liver disease and underwent a successful liver transplant.

An author, essayist and playwright — notably hailed for his autobiographical 1985 play, “The Normal Heart” — Mr. Kramer had feet in both the world of letters and the public sphere. In 1981 he was a founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first service organization for H.I.V.-positive people, though his fellow directors effectively kicked him out a year later for his aggressive approach. (He returned the compliment by calling them “a sad organization of sissies.”)

He was then a founder of a more militant group, Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), whose street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severely disrupted the operations of government offices, Wall Street and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Even some of the officials Mr. Kramer accused of “murder” and “genocide” recognized that his outbursts were part of a strategy to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency. “One of America’s most valuable troublemakers,” Susan Sontag called him.

 Voters are unimpressed with Cuomo’s oversight of nursing homes.

Governor Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus crisis appears to be damaging his standing among New York voters.

In a Siena College poll released Wednesday morning, a plurality of registered voters (48 percent) said he did only a “fair” or “poor” job addressing the needs of nursing homes. 44 percent of voters rated his nursing home management “good” or “excellent.”

Mr. Cuomo’s administration had come under withering criticism for sending more than 4,500 convalescing coronavirus patients into nursing homes filled with vulnerable people, according to a tally by The Associated Press. At the time, the administration thought it prudent to free up as many hospital beds as possible for an anticipated tsunami of acute coronavirus cases.

Covid-19 has killed more than 6,000 residents in nursing home and adult care facilities, including deaths presumed to be linked to the virus. On May 10, Mr. Cuomo reversed the administration’s policy.

The governor has blamed nursing homes for failing to raise their concerns. 

Mr. Cuomo’s overall favorability ratings also fell this month, from a high of 77 in April to 66. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent.

“Cuomo’s stratospheric ratings from New Yorkers in April have fallen from their record highs but remain very strong as two-thirds of voters still view him favorably, nearly two-thirds give him a positive job performance rating and more than three-quarters still approve of the job he’s doing to address the pandemic,” said Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster.

Pollsters interviewed 796 registered voters in New York State between May 17 and May 21. They found that 37 percent of voters — and nearly half of downstate voters — know someone who was killed by Covid-19.

‘Ugly Even for Him’: Trump’s Usual Allies Recoil at His Smear of MSNBC Host

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner chastised the president as a top House Republican, Liz Cheney, urged him to “stop” his attacks on Joe Scarborough.

Some of President Trump’s most stalwart media defenders broke ranks with him on Wednesday, aghast at his baseless smears against the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, whom Mr. Trump has all but accused of killing a former staff member two decades ago despite a total lack of evidence.

The backlash even spread to the senior levels of Mr. Trump’s party on Capitol Hill, where the No. 3 House Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the president should drop the matter and focus on leading the country through the coronavirus pandemic. “I would urge him to stop it,” she told reporters, referring to the false allegations.

The vast majority of Republican officials have kept silent about the president’s Twitter barrage against Mr. Scarborough, and the most prominent conservative voices on Fox News, like Sean Hannity,  Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.let the subject go unmentioned on recent broadcasts.

But Ms. Cheney’s criticism was a sign of stepped-up pressure on Mr. Trump from the right, reflected in this week’s unusual chorus of reproach from the conservative media platforms the president often turns to for comfort.

The New York Post, Mr. Trump’s first read in the morning, lamented in Wednesday’s paper that the president “decided to suggest that a TV morning-show host committed murder. That is a depressing sentence to type.” In a staff editorial, The Post addressed its most powerful reader directly: “Trust us, you did not look like the bigger man.”

The Washington Examiner, a popular conservative news site, published a scathing article calling Mr. Trump’s attacks “incompatible with leadership” and “vile.” Mr. Trump is usually enamored of The Examiner, one of the few news sites to which he routinely grants interviews, including one this month.

And the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a bellwether of establishment conservatism, called Mr. Trump’s unfounded accusation against Mr. Scarborough “ugly even for him.”

“We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop,” The Journal wrote in its editorial. “Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.”

If the blowback affected Mr. Trump, the president has not shown it. He taunted Mr. Scarborough — a former Republican congressman and one-time social acquaintance of Mr. Trump who is now one of his harshest TV critics — again on Wednesday in a tweet that referred to a “Cold Case.”

The president’s attacks have caused anguish to the family of Lori Klausutis, the staff member in Mr. Scarborough’s former congressional office who died in 2001 when a heart condition caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk. Mr. Scarborough was not present and the police ruled her death an accident. Ms. Klausutis’s relatives have said that the president’s evocation of her death and his unfounded insinuation that she had an affair with Mr. Scarborough have caused them deep distress.

Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and a frequent Trump critic, tweeted on Wednesday in support of her widower, T.J. Klausutis. “His heart is breaking,” Mr. Romney wrote. “Enough already.” Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, told reporters on Wednesday that the president’s claims were “out of bounds,” adding, “there’s no evidence.”

“Trump opening up this front with Joe Scarborough is another thing in the news cycle, another thing for people to talk about,” Mr. Polskin said. “It occupies time on the talk shows. It gets people away from that 100,000 figure,” referring to the estimated number of Americans who have died from coronavirus. “Trump’s a master at that,” he added. “Throwing out these bright, shiny diversions.”