14 July 2021: Cuomo Administration Playing Games With COVID Death Counts

Fed Count of New York COVID-19 Death Toll Tops Cuomo Report by 11,000

This report covers the wider pool of New York's COVID-19 deaths than just the Cuomo administration's official count ofdeaths among New York nursing home residents. It points to a continuing pattern of deceptive practices for reporting the state's COVID death data.

The federal government's count of the COVID-19 death toll in New York has 11,000 more victims than the tally publicized by the administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which has stuck with a far more conservative approach to counting virus deaths.

The discrepancy in death counts continued to widen this year, according to an Associated Press review, even as the Democrat has come under fire over allegations that his office purposely obscured the number of deaths of nursing home residents to protect his reputation.

New York state’s official death count, presented daily to the public and on the state's Department of Health website, stood at around 43,000 this week. But the state has provided the federal government with data that shows roughly 54,000 people have died with COVID-19 as a cause or contributing factor listed on their death certificate.

“It’s a little strange," said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. "They’re providing us with the death certificate information so they have it. I don’t know why they wouldn’t use those numbers.”

The Cuomo administration is using arbitrary definitions to reduce the COVID death figures it reports:

The Cuomo administration's count includes only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths at hospitals, nursing homes and adult-care facilities. That means its tally excludes people who died at home, hospice, in state prisons or at state-run homes for people living with disabilities.

It also excludes people who likely died of COVID-19 but never got a positive test to confirm the diagnosis. Tests were scarce in the early stages of New York's outbreak. At least 5,000 New York City residents likely died of COVID-19 without a positive test, according to city statistics....

New York’s refusal to share details comes amid months-long scrutiny over how the state has reported COVID-19 data.

The report indicates other states, including California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, are reporting data that follows the CDC's guidance for reporting COVID-related deaths. Texas is singled out as a state that does not, in that it includes deaths where COVID is the main cause in its official count, but not when it is an associated or contributing factor per the CDC's guidance. Texas however does not limit its death reporting based on where COVID deaths occur however, which appears unique to New York.

We should note that Michigan's COVID data reporting may have a similar issue as New York, which arises through insufficient data collection practices. New York collects sufficient data, so the Cuomo administration does not have that excuse. Michigan's state auditor is auditing the accuracy of the state's COVID death data.

The Cuomo administration's COVID death reporting practices are not going over well among public health officials:

“Unfortunately New York state has chosen to politicize epidemiological information so I feel like they’re lost all credibility over what’s the best estimate of COVID deaths in New York State,” CUNY professor Dennis Nash said.

New York City health officials, who are keeping their own separate fatality count, have asked the state to clarify its reporting practices, according to spokesperson Bill Neidhardt. The city’s website reports the same number of COVID-19 deaths as the CDC.

“The CDC, WHO, those are the epidemiologically standard ways of counting mortality, of counting positivity,” city hall spokesperson Bill Neidhardt said. “That is what we reflect. I can’t tell you why the state numbers are different.”

If the Cuomo administration thought it was to their advantage to report COVID deaths in a way that follows the CDC's and World Health Organization's guidance, it would.