In this Friday, April 17, 2020 file photo, a patient is wheeled out of the Cobble Hill Health Center by emergency medical workers in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The facility has listed dozens of deaths linked to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. In New York state, the nation’s leader in nursing home deaths, the Greater New York Hospital Association lobbying group wrote the first draft of an emergency declaration making it the only state with protection from both civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution arising from the pandemic, with the order signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
By MARINA VILLENEUVE and JENNIFER PELTZ (AP)
New York hospitals released more than 6,300 recovering coronavirus patients into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic under a controversial, now-scrapped policy, state officials said Monday, but they argued it was not to blame for one of the nation’s highest nursing home death tolls.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, which has taken intense criticism over the policy, instead contended the virus’ rampant spread through the state’s nursing homes was propelled by more than 20,000 infected home staffers, many of whom kept going to work unaware they had the virus in March and April. Another 17,500 workers were infected through early June.
“Facts matter. And those are the facts,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a news conference.
New York’s report came more than a month after The Associated Press did its own count finding that hospitals around the state released more than 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes under a March 25 Health Department directive that required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.
The directive was intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged. But several relatives, patient advocates and nursing administrators who spoke to the AP at the time blamed the policy for helping to spread the virus among the state’s most fragile residents. To date, more than 6,400 deaths have been linked to the coronavirus in New York’s nursing home and long-term care-facilities.
Cuomo, a Democrat, reversed the directive under pressure on May 10, but he has argued for weeks that infected home workers, not released COVID-19 patients, were to blame for a coronavirus spread through nursing homes that he compared to “fire through dry grass.”
He noted Monday that it wasn’t well understood early on how readily the virus could be spread by people without symptoms.
“Nobody knew what they were talking about for a long time. That’s the bottom line here,” he told reporters in New York.
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