11 February 2021: Over 9,000 Patients with COVID Dumped from Hospitals into NY Nursing Homes

AP: Over 9,000 virus patients sent into NY nursing homes

This report gets into the extent of the state's undercount of the number of COVID-19 patients who were sent back to nursing homes after being treated for the infections at hospitals:

More than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients in New York state were released from hospitals into nursing homes early in the pandemic under a controversial directive that was scrapped amid criticism it accelerated outbreaks, according to new records obtained by The Associated Press.

The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40% higher than what the state health department previously released. And it raises new questions as to whether a March 25 directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration helped spread sickness and death among residents, a charge the state disputes.

"The lack of transparency and the meting out of bits of important data has undermined our ability to both recognize the scope and severity of what's going on" and address it, said Richard Mollot, the executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a residents advocacy group.

But wait, it gets worse:

In its reply to an AP Freedom of Information request from May, the state health department this week released two figures: a previously disclosed count of 6,327 admissions of patients directly from hospitals and a new count of 2,729 "readmissions" of patients sent back from a hospital to the nursing home where they had lived before.

Having undercounted the extent of Governor Cuomo's forced admission directive by such a large number, the findings of the New York Department of Health's 6 July 2020 report exonerating itself and the Cuomo administration of responsibility for excess nursing home resident COVID-19 deaths looks even more bogus.