28 January 2021: Real COVID Nursing Home Death Toll Much Higher than Cuomo Administration Admits

The real Covid death toll at nursing homes, and the staggering heartache in NY (exclusive)

This entry was retroactively inserted into the timeline on 26 December 2021. This report by Advance Media NY's Tim Knauss broke the news that New York's COVID death toll among nursing home residents was substantially greater than Andrew M. Cuomo's administration was officially acknowledging. The report was quickly overtaken in the news cycle later in the day when the New York State Attorney General's office released its report confirming the magnitude of the Cuomo administration's cover-up.

Because the original article is contained behind a subscriber paywall, the excerpt below is taken from the editors' year-end summary of where their organization's reporting made a difference during 2021.

Dogged reporting by Tim Knauss led to the bombshell headline in January that deaths from Covid-19 in Onondaga County nursing homes were 50% higher than New York state had reported. Within hours, state Attorney General Letitia James dropped her bombshell report about the true number of nursing home deaths, confirming our reporting and undercutting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s heroic Covid narrative. It was the beginning of the end of Cuomo’s 10-year reign; he resigned in August under the weight of sexual harassment allegations and the threat of impeachment over the nursing home cover-up.

The timeline seeks to acknowledge good reporting, especially when it breaks news, wherever we find it. When combined with the attorney general's findings, this report contributed to opening the floodgates of scandals that ultimately led to Andrew M. Cuomo's resignation in disgrace in August 2021.