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In Wake Of Cuomo’s Exit, New York State Increases Official COVID-19 Death Tally By 12,000
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Aug 25, 2021
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By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Aug 25, 2021
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The New York State Department of Health has increased the COVID-19 death toll on its websites by 12,000 fatalities, finally bringing its reported tallies in line with ones it had been releasing to the federal government.
The main difference is that the count now incorporates presumed COVID-19 deaths, where a person had several signs and symptoms of the disease but no official test for the coronavirus. Many of these fatalities occurred at the very start of the pandemic when tests were scarce. Presumed COVID deaths can also include people who died outside of traditional settings like hospitals or nursing homes.
The adjustment raises the state’s internal count of New Yorkers who perished from 43,404 COVID deaths, reported on Monday, to 55,395 as of yesterday.
"It's about being more transparent,” Hochul said on NPR Wednesday morning. “There's no opportunity for us to mask those numbers, nor do I want to mask those numbers. The public deserves a clear, honest picture of what's happening. Whether it's good or bad, they need to know the truth. That’s how we restore confidence.”
While state health officials had been reporting the additional deaths to the federal government as requested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Associated Press reported in July that they weren’t publishing those same tallies on New York's websites or press releases.
Rich Azzopardi, a senior aide and spokesperson for Cuomo, insisted nothing was amiss with the state’s previous COVID death count, responding from Cuomo’s campaign email.
“New York always reported these numbers and they were always publicly available,” he told WNYC/Gothamist.
New York’s inconsistent record-keeping regarding COVID-19 fatalities under Governor Cuomo has long troubled lawmakers, government watchdogs and local health officials, many of whom abandoned the state as a serious source of data months ago.
“The state lost all credibility,” said Dr. Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the CUNY School of Public Health. “There is always a risk of politicization of this kind of vital information by elected officials, which we have unfortunately seen in New York during Governor Cuomo's tenure.”
The data inaccuracies had been continuously spotted during the pandemic, such as when the state reached a grim milestone of 50,000 COVID-19 deaths in March, as deemed by federal reporting and tracking by Johns Hopkins University. That day the state’s daily COVID press release cited just 40,390 of those deaths.
Inconsistent data also formed the basis of the nursing home scandal that plagued the final months of Cuomo’s tenure.
Under pressure in spring 2020, New York state health officials began releasing tallies of presumed and confirmed COVID deaths in nursing homes that May. But they excluded the deaths of nursing home residents who were sent to hospitals and died there--rather than inside the care facilities themselves. That data breach eventually triggered a January 2021 report from New York’s State Attorney General, which forced Cuomo to confront the issue, as well as an ongoing federal investigation.
Unlike the state, New York City’s Health Department began publicly releasing its own separate tally of presumed COVID-19 deaths in April 2020, following a WNYC/Gothamist report that revealed the massive surge of New Yorkers who were dying at home without having received a COVID-19 test. About 5,000 New York City residents died before a test confirmed they had caught the virus.
When asked at a press conference in May 2020 to provide similar numbers for the state, Cuomo punted.
“Different places do it differently all across the country. They're two different numbers, right?” he said as governor. “We'll tell you when we find out.”
Hochul’s office didn’t return several requests for further comment on the newly released death toll.
Tagged
COVID-19
andrew cuomo
new york city
new york
nys doh
nursing home
health
Kathy Hochul
death
Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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