March 4, 2021.Top aides to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo were alarmed: A report written by state health officials had just landed, and it included a count of how many nursing home residents in New York had died in the pandemic.
As the nursing home report was being written, the New York State Health Department's data - contained in a chart reviewed by The Times that was included in a draft - put the death toll roughly 50 percent higher than the figure then being cited publicly by the Cuomo administration.
Mr. Cuomo disputed that it had. Still, critics and others seized on the way the state was publicly reporting deaths: Unlike other states, New York excluded residents who had been transferred to hospitals and died there, effectively cloaking how many nursing home residents had died of Covid-19.Updated.
March 5, 2021, 6:19 a.m. ET.The 33-page report, which was issued in July by the state Health Department, found Mr. Cuomo's policies were not to blame, but it became a turning point in the Albany debate over the governor's policies.
The July report allowed Mr. Cuomo to treat the nursing home issue as resolved last year, paving the way for him to focus on touting New York's success in controlling the virus.
Ms. Garvey said in her statement that the governor's order did not drive nursing home deaths, a conclusion that was also reached in the Health Department report.
For its report, the Health Department had drawn on data submitted by the state's more than 600 nursing homes, which were particularly hard hit in March and early April, as New York became a global epicenter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/nyregion/cuomo-nursing-home-deaths.html
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