STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After the New York State Department of Health (DOH) issued a report which concluded that the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in nursing homes was not primarily related to controversial decisions made by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) joined the chorus of local electeds and others calling for an independent investigation into the matter.
The DOH report was released on July 6, 2020, and said, in part, that it is likely nursing home workers “who were infected in mid-March transmitted the virus unknowingly—through no fault of their own—while working, which then led to resident infection.”
NYSNA, which represents approximately 42,000 frontline nurses throughout the state, said the findings did “not reflect the experiences of frontline nurses of NYSNA who throughout were pointing at critical shortages of personal protective equipment and calling for widespread testing in order to guide New York’s response to the virus since the onset of this pandemic.”
The NYSNA statement recalled the association’s early calls for the federal government to produce the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies necessary to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“The nurses at my nursing home put their lives on the line to protect our residents and treat our very sick patients,” said Judy Johnson, an RN at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn. “Our record is clear: nurses at my facility and others where NYSNA nurses cared for patients in critical conditions helped save New York. We went to work every day without sufficient PPE, short-staffed, and with poor health and safety protocols, and we saved thousands of lives.”
“We wish the Trump Administration had actually invoked the Defense Production Act to get us what we needed on the frontlines. We also wish that the State of New York had been more effective in getting us PPE,” Johnson said. “Hospitals still will not fully account for the PPE in their stocks. These were the conditions of work for us, NYSNA nurses — some gave their lives in the service of New York.”
NYSNA, joining a growing list of local politicians and others, was critical of the state DOH report, saying, “New Yorkers deserve a full accounting of what happened over the past four months, and the NYSDOH nursing home report, unfortunately, does not move us forward.”
“The need is plain for a comprehensive, independent review of nursing home practices, the role of for-profit operators, and NYSDOH oversight,” NYSNA said.
Cuomo’s office, which oversees the state DOH — the department responsible for managing nursing homes throughout New York State — did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding NYSNA’s statement.
The state DOH said in a statement that protecting nursing home residents and staff remains a primary concern of the agency.
“We’ve said from the start that protecting our most vulnerable populations including nursing home residents and those who care for them is our top priority,” said state DOH spokesman Jeffrey Hammond, adding that independent reviewers validated the findings of the state’s report.
“And as a Department of Health in-depth analysis of nursing home data found COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to asymptomatic nursing home staff, we continue to support and protect those frontline nursing home workers with more than 14 million pieces of PPE, over a million tests kits for staff testing, and having conducted more than 1200 COVID compliance inspections since March 1,” the statement continued.
In this May 27, 2020, file photo, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.AP
Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore), who has repeatedly called for an independent investigation into Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus in nursing homes at both the state and federal level, previously said it is “outrageous that the governor is trying to shift blame to our frontline workers.”
Malliotakis previously has said Cuomo’s March 25 directive “effectively unleashed a wolf into a hen house,” and said Cuomo is “wrong” to pin the virus’ spread on nursing home staff “after all the pain and selflessness they’ve exhibited during the pandemic.”
The March 25 directive is no longer viewable on the state DOH website, and Cuomo effectively reversed the order on May 10, forcing individuals to test negative before being admitted to a nursing home facility. However, he has dismissed the “political heat” he has received for the decision.
“There are facts and there’s politics,” he said in late June.
The state DOH report, while not ruling out that the governor’s March 25 directive ordering nursing homes to accept “medically stable” coronavirus patients from hospitals played a role in the high number of deaths at the facilities, did not list it as a “driving force of infections,” the Advance/SILive.com previously reported.
The report said 80% of the 310 nursing homes that admitted coronavirus-positive patients already had a confirmed or suspected case among residents or staff.
The state DOH findings lean heavily on published data that said the average length of time between COVID-19 infection and death is between 18 and 25 days.
“Therefore, the link between the timing of staff infection and nursing home mortality is supported by the fact that the peak number of nursing home staff reported COVID-19 symptoms on March 16, 2020—23 days prior to the date of the peak nursing home fatalities, which occurred on April 8, 2020,” the report said.
However, data tracked by the Advance/SILive.com paints a different picture on the borough.
While the report said that the “peak” of nursing home deaths occurred on April 8, Staten Island suffered a total of 117 confirmed and presumed deaths within nursing homes by April 17 — exactly 23 days after the March 25 directive was put into effect.
Over the next 18 days, which falls within the Health Department’s timeframe for the average period between COVID-19 infection and death, an additional 121 deaths occurred, state DOH data showed at the time — over doubling Staten Island’s total to 238.
The March 25 directive resulted in 6,326 COVID-positive patients being accepted into nursing homes by May 8, and by late April, the Advance/SILive.com reported more than 100 patients were discharged from hospitals back into borough nursing home facilities.
The timing of deaths in the borough continues to raise questions about the danger the March 25 order posed to Staten Island nursing homes, since the Island’s death total continued to climb over a month after Cuomo’s directive was put into effect.
The state DOH report further shifted blame from Cuomo, saying that preliminary data indicated residents were being admitted back to the facilities by a median of nine days after hospital admission — the exact amount of time health experts believe individuals are no longer infectious after symptom onset.
“Thus, by the time these patients were admitted to a nursing home after their hospital stay, they were no longer contagious,” the DOH said.
The report also assigns potential blame for the spread into nursing homes to visitation, which occurred at the facilities before March 13, the date when visits were entirely suspended throughout the state. No evidence exists to support this claim, however, since no tracking or testing was done within state facilities at that time.
Assemblyman Mike Reilly (R-South Shore), who also joined Malliotakis in calls for an independent investigation, said: “Governor Cuomo’s smoke-and-mirror tactics will not fool New Yorkers this time.”
“His refusal to authorize an independent – and I cannot emphasize the word ‘independent’ enough – investigation into nursing home fatalities is all the proof you need that even he knows that the directives issued by his administration played a role in those fatalities,” Reilly said, asserting, “Perhaps the federal government needs to investigate.”