AP Report: New York Officials Using a Loophole to Underreport Nursing Home Virus Deaths

Nick Kangadis | August 12, 2020
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Throughout the entirety of this pandemic that was thrust upon us, I’ve been saying how it’s difficult to know what information to trust because there’s been so much of it conflicts or contradicts each other. According to the Associated Press (AP), the state of New York uses a loophole that allows them to possibly fudge the number of people who died of COVID-19 in nursing homes.

The AP reported:

New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.

That statistic could add thousands to the state’s official care home death toll of just over 6,600. But so far the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to divulge the number, leading to speculation the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire.

This is big news when you consider that Cuomo has been touting his state’s response and allegedly improving COVID numbers almost every day for the last few weeks on Twitter and in press conferences.

The AP also noted the case of Riverdale Nursing Home in the Bronx, where the state “officially” have reported that only four people died in a relatively populated 146-bed facility. The problem with the reporting, “according to the home,” is that in reality 21 people died who were at their facility, but most of them were transferred to local hospitals before they died.

That allowed the state of New York to allegedly underreport the number of fatalities by using the loophole that patients didn’t pass away on nursing home grounds.

That’s pretty shady, with even Democrat state politicians calling out the nefarious practice.

“It seems, sir, that in this case you are choosing to define it differently so that you can look better,” state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat, told New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker during a legislative hearing on nursing homes earlier this month, according to the AP.

If there’s nothing to hide and things are going so well in the state of New York, as Cuomo will tell anyone who listens, why refuse to “divulge the number?” I’m just saying.

H/T: Louder with Crowder

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