18 February 2021: Nonpartisan Think Tank Says Cuomo's Deadly Directive Killed Over 1,000

Cuomo policy may have led to over 1,000 nursing home deaths, watchdog says

How many more elderly, sick residents of New York's nursing homes and assisted care facilities died from COVID-19 than would have otherwise if not for the Cuomo administration's 25 March 2020 directive that forced these residences to admit patients known to have coronavirus infections while forbidding them from testing the patients to determine if they were still contagious?

The answer to that question is why serious media outlets and public policy groups have been seeking New York's public data on the COVID-19 deaths of New York's nursing home residents. Keeping them from being able to answer that question is why the Cuomo administration obstructed the release of the state's public data for months on end.

And now, we have a preliminary estimate based on the incomplete data that has emerged in recent weeks, as this report indicates:

The Cuomo administration's controversial directive for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients amid the pandemic likely did lead to a spike in resident deaths, an analysis of its own data revealed Thursday.

The study by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy tied "several hundred and possibly more than 1,000" fatalities to the since-rescinded March 25, 2020, order that critics have blamed for spreading the coronavirus among vulnerable seniors.

The analysis also suggests the controversial mandate is "associated with" more than one in six of 5,780 nursing deaths statewide between late March and early May.

"The findings contradict a central conclusion of the state Department of Health's July 6 report on coronavirus in nursing homes, which said, among other things: 'Admission policies were not a significant factor in nursing home fatalities,' and 'the data do not show a consistent relationship between admissions and increased mortality,' " according to a draft report prepared by the Empire Center.

We'll take a closer look at the Empire Center's analysis in the near future.