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NY State Adds 1,300 COVID-19 Deaths To Nursing Home Toll, But Still Falls Short Of Full Accounting
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published May 6, 2020
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Seth Wenig/AP/Shutterstock
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published May 6, 2020
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New York State quietly added more than a thousand additional deaths to its tally of long-term care residents who have perished from COVID-19, bringing the official death toll to 4,968 — about a quarter of all fatalities in the state.
The state said most deaths occurred at the 500-bed Parker Jewish Institute For Health Care & Rehab in Queens; the 700-bed facility Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan; and the Franklin Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing, a 320-bed facility, with 71, 64, and 59 deaths respectively. Staff at Parker Jewish and Franklin Center didn’t return requests for comment right away.
The latest numbers, which include 2,829 deaths in New York City facilities and 1,529 more in Suffolk, Nassau, and Westchester counties, covers nursing homes and other adult-care sites. The latest count has doubled in two weeks ago, when the state first started releasing a detailed breakdown of where outbreaks were occurring.
But they do not capture the true devastation the virus has caused in these facilities, because the state is not including residents who were transferred to hospitals and died there. Those numbers are reported as hospital deaths, officials said.
Several facilities confirmed to Gothamist/WNYC they had reported higher death numbers to the state health department than what the state included publicly.
At the Isabella Geriatric Center in Washington Heights, for example, where NY1 reported last week nearly 100 residents had died, a spokeswoman confirmed that 98 residents had passed away with either presumed or confirmed cases of COVID-19. That number included 38 people who were sent to hospitals and later passed away, she said. The state, however, is only publicly reporting 64 deaths there There was no explanation for the discrepancy..
“From the beginning of this pandemic, Isabella has reported truthful and accurate data,” said the spokeswoman, Audrey Waters. “We have shared daily the number of confirmed and presumed positive cases at both the residence and hospital, including deaths.”
A similar undercount exists at the Hebrew Home for the Aged, a 751-bed facility in Riverdale. Officials there say they had 25 deaths from the virus, including people who passed away at hospitals. The state is only reporting 15 deaths there.
“The Hebrew Home has been and continues to be fully transparent in its reporting of deaths due to Covid,” said spokeswoman Wendy Steinberg.
At a press conference Tuesday, Jim Malatras, the president of SUNY Empire State College and a special advisor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said nursing-home residents who die in the hospital are counted as hospital deaths.
A refrigerator truck for bodies sits behind the Isabella Center on May 1, 2020
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
The governor said the discrepancy is an example of how difficult it is to track the virus’s toll.
“I would take all of these numbers with a grain of salt,” he said.
A state health department official said the dataset was constantly evolving and that nursing homes were required to report confirmed and suspected covid deaths of residents that took place both in the facility and outside it.
For weeks, many nursing homes struggled to get access to testing kits to screen residents and protective gear for their staff. Workers were calling out sick, leading to deplorable conditions at some facilities. Some had begged the state for assistance to take on sick residents at the largely under-used USNS Comfort floating hospital, to no avail.
But nursing homes do appear to be getting better access to protective gear, surge staffing, and test kits. Officials at the Cobble Hill Health Center, for example, where 53 residents have died from the virus, now say they’ve finally been able to separate residents with COVID from those who don’t have the virus.
“Due to better access to testing, our low overall census, our greatly reduced population on isolation, and improvement in staffing, we were able to fully operationalize our cohorting plan,” CEO Donny Tuchman wrote in an open letter on April 30. “This was a complex puzzle that took over a week of planning and many dozens of hours to carry out. Going forward, any new COVID residents will be placed on our dedicated COVID unit where they will remain for the balance of their illness being cared for by dedicated staff.”
Dr. Roy Goldberg, the medical director at Kings Harbor Multicare Center, where 54 residents have passed away, said they too have much better access to testing which makes isolating COVID-19 patients and dedicated staff to a particular ward much easier.
“We are the front line,” Dr. Goldberg said. “We need to be the focus of supplies and staffing and hopefully this will never happen again.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio said this week his office would disperse 1.9 million surgical masks, as well as tens of thousands of face shields, gloves, gowns, aprons, and shoe coverings to assist nursing homes. The state has distributed an additional two million pieces of personal protective gear, according to the Health Department.
When asked at Tuesday’s press briefing what could be done differently to protect nursing home residents, Cuomo pointed to requirements put in place by the state’s Health Department in mid-March, banning most visitation and requiring health checks of staff as well as an open probe by the Attorney General's office.
“The nursing homes, we said from day one are the most vulnerable places,” he said. “What can you do better going forward? I don’t know. It’s something we’re studying.”
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COVID-19
coronavirus
nursing home
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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