7 April 2021: Cuomo Excuses for COVID Nursing Home Death Data Stonewalling Confirmed False

Cuomo administration tracked nursing home deaths despite claims they couldn't be 'verified,' document shows

A new blockbuster report, confirming New York public health officials and the Cuomo administration were falsely claiming they could not provide detailed information on COVID nursing home resident deaths as they stonewalled for months.

EXCLUSIVE: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration was tracking the location of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 since at least April 2020, despite officials’ claims that those numbers could not be "verified" for a report issued months later.

The revelation comes in a new Department of Health document obtained exclusively by Fox News. According to the document, nursing homes were required to submit the number of residents who died from COVID-19 at least once daily.

"A new field has been added under the CURRENT Resident Death Details section of the form," reads a portion of the form, beneath the words "UPDATE (04/19/20)". "The new field will collect the resident's Place of Death and is required for all resident deaths you are reporting in that section."

The document raises new questions about the Cuomo administration’s decision to exclude key details from a July 2020 report about COVID-19 in nursing homes. According to the New York Times, senior officials including the governor’s top aide intervened to exclude thousands of nursing home deaths before the report was released, including out-of-facility deaths.

The report was not updated to include those deaths until February 2021, following a damning report from Attorney General Letitia James and a lawsuit from the Empire Center, a nonprofit think tank.

But wait, there's more!

Beth Garvey, acting counsel to Cuomo, told the New York Times last month that "the out-of-facility data was omitted after D.O.H. could not confirm it had been adequately verified."

This mirrors language from the state’s health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, who testified to lawmakers in August that there was "a lot of confusion" and "this was an evolving process."

But as the document obtained by Fox News reveals, state health officials had begun requesting the out-of-facility data for at least 78 days before they released the original report.

Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, told Fox News that "this is further confirmation the Cuomo administration waged a months-long coverup of the full death toll in New York nursing homes."

This article from 19 May 2020 describes the scramble of New York Department of Health officials, including its director Howard Zucker, to get nursing home resident death data beginning on 16 April 2020. The questionnaires the NYDOH initially sent to nursing home operators were quite confusing, but the new report confirms they had straightened out the reporting of new deaths of nursing home residents within a few days.

Since they never reported the full extent of those deaths until compelled by court order to do so, it also confirms the Cuomo administration's cover-up and stonewalling effectively began no fewer than 129 days before the Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice first requested data related to the COVID-related deaths of nursing home residents in New York on 26 August 2020.

It also confirms that Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa's 11 February 2021 claim to New York Democratic Party lawmakers that she and the Cuomo administration hid the data because they feared prosecution by the Trump DOJ was outright false. In reality, the only thing they feared was the truth of the consequences of their acts being found out.

That's a lot of lying to federal and elected state officials. Do any of them care enough to do anything about it?

Gov. Cuomo Responds To Reports He Arranged Special Access To COVID Tests For Family, Friends

Here's video coverage of Governor Cuomo's comments: