On April 18, 2020, emergency medical services (EMS) workers transported patients to the medical center in Brooklyn, New York, where the nursing home already had 55 COVID-19 deaths.
On December 16, a number of New York Republican lawmakers signed a letter to President Trump expressing the failure of the New York State Department and the State Department of health to provide data on COVID-19 (Chinese Communist Virus) deaths in New York nursing homes. The lawmakers have repeatedly requested data from the State Department of Health, including for those who contracted the virus in nursing homes but died elsewhere.
The joint letter mentions that President Trump gave New York State troops, millions of personal protective equipment (PPE), and thousands of respirators at the beginning of the outbreak, but New York State was still hit hard, especially in nursing homes.
The letter reads, “Members of the New York State Assembly have repeatedly asked the State Department of Health (NYS DOH) to provide a complete and accurate accounting of all COVID-19 deaths, including those who contracted the virus in nursing homes but died elsewhere. So far, the requests in our report have been completely ignored, which is sad.”
The lawmakers involved in the re-signing said a variety of political groups, as well as families whose loved ones passed away from COVID-19 in nursing homes, have asked the state Department of Health to follow the Freedom of Information Law in releasing the data, and members of the New York State Assembly have held numerous forums and hearings on the matter, but the state Department of Health has repeatedly delayed.
Months have passed and the number of (deaths) has increased again, but we have not had the opportunity to review the information to better prepare for what is about to happen,” the letter said. Some groups have even resorted to legal action to obtain information, but so far it has been to no avail.”
Back on Sept. 24, New York State Republican Assemblyman William Barclay, Assemblyman Kevin Byrne and 24 other members of the legislature sent a joint letter to Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease and Health Control (CDC), expressing the state Department of Health’s reluctance to release the number of COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes.
On December 15, New York State Republican Congressman Kevin Byrne sent a separate letter to President Trump asking the White House to assist New York State Republican lawmakers in obtaining the true death toll from the outbreak in New York State nursing homes.
As policymakers, we must have the true numbers so we can learn from the plague pandemic and support better policies moving forward,” said Kevin Byrne. Requests for this information from family members who lost loved ones have been ignored for far too long.”
Kevin Bourne said, “Earlier this year, I led a group of lawmakers in a written request to the CDC to update its rules to ensure retrospective reporting so that we know how many patients died from COVID-19 infection in senior care facilities. We are getting a thousand and one responses, which is unacceptable. It’s time to engage the president to make sure this information is available.”
On March 25 of this year, Cuomo ordered nursing homes not to deny admission to people who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 out of concern that there were not enough hospital beds. It drew protests from many nursing homes at the time, saying they did not have the capacity to care for patients or isolate them. The governor’s order was later criticized as the direct cause of the nursing home outbreak.
April was the peak of the outbreak in New York, and as of April 14, about 25 percent (2,722) of the deaths in New York State from the CCP virus came from nursing homes and adult care facilities. Of these, the highest number of deaths was in Queens, New York City, at 603.
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