New York’s coronavirus-ravaged nursing homes are still “acutely vulnerable” to the deadly disease – more than nine months after the pandemic, according to a report on Thursday.
Between Oct. 25 and Nov. 29, nursing home residents were responsible for a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths statewide, despite making up less than half of 1 percent of the population, the Empire Center for Public Policy found.
“It seems like they are more vulnerable than ever,” said Bill Hammond, senior health policy fellow at the independent think tank.
During that five-week period, there were 268 deaths from the coronavirus in the facilities, according to federal data reviewed by Hammond. That number represents 26 percent of all virus deaths reported by the Department of Health during that period.
Nursing homes in New York state were far more affected than those in the Big Apple, responsible for 18 of the deaths, the data showed.
In the states of Southern Tier, including Binghamton, Corning and Elmira, there were 84 COVID-19 fatalities in those weeks – accounting for 71 percent of the region’s number.
The troubling details come despite the state’s strict restrictions on nursing homes – such as limited visits and weekly tests for staff – after the spring wave of infections.
Hammond said he believed “nursing homes were better protected than ever,” but after completing his found analysis, “it doesn’t seem like it.”
“I think it is extremely difficult to protect nursing home residents from this virus because they are so acutely vulnerable,” he told The Post.
“Although they are cut off from the rest of the world themselves, they have regular intimate contact with the workforce … and those people are out of the world to some extent and inevitably exposed to the virus.”
While the state of coronavirus fatalities – both in and outside nursing homes – remain lower than in April and May, Hammond said the troubling trend needs to be addressed.
“It puzzles me that this issue, this trend, has not been addressed by the Governor or his people in the daily briefings,” he said.
“It’s a huge percentage of deaths, especially in nursing homes in the state, and we knew they were taking a lot of special care and protection.”
Government Andrew Cuomo has been criticizing for months that policies from his health department in the early days of the pandemic fueled outbreaks in hard-hit nursing homes.
A later withdrawn March 25 directive required nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals, a controversial policy that the governor claimed followed federal guidelines.
The Cuomo government has made public about 6,500 deaths from COVID-19 in long-term care facilities statewide since March, but has declined to say how many died after being taken to hospitals for emergency care.
Lawmakers and the Empire Center have filed requests for freedom of information law and have sued the state for refusing to release those numbers. That suit is pending.
Cuomo critics and health care experts have told the governor and his health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, torn for the guideline, which required nursing homes to allow COVID-positive residents to return from hospitals when they did not require intensive care.
They argue that the mandate has helped spark outbreaks in long-term care facilities, which are home to the elderly and the sick – some of those most vulnerable to the deadly disease.
And an analysis of the data by the Associated Press indicates that the number of deaths in nursing homes may be grossly underreported. About 323 nursing home residents died between early June and mid-July, according to the AP assessment of federal data – 65 percent higher than the 195 deaths the state counted during that same period.
If that rate is indicative of reporting inequalities during the duration of the pandemic, it could be responsible for thousands of additional coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes.
The state of DOH released an internal report in July saying the virus was mainly spread by staff members through the facilities.
But the self-assessment, which tried to justify the department’s heavily criticized policies, was criticized by experts who said it was riddled with holes.
“There are no more excuses. We know these facilities are the most vulnerable to COVID and Governor Cuomo and his government still don’t know how to protect them. He doesn’t care, he isn’t able to rule, or both. It is time we considered removing his powers, ”said City Councilor Ron Kim (D-Queens), a frequent critic of state nursing home policy, Thursday.
But Gary Holmes, DOH spokesman, defended his boss’s decisions, claiming that “the right-wing political machine” “ignores science, data and facts” – despite the quoted figures being reported to the FBI by their own New York nursing homes.
“What we’ve said from the beginning is happening in all 50 states – if this virus enters a community, it also ends up in nursing homes, usually through asymptomatic staff or visitors.”
He added: “New York continues to make every effort to protect our residents and nursing home staff, including a restriction on visits in red and orange zones, a return to bi-weekly testing in all microcluster zones, and in the coming days a comprehensive program in which nursing home residents and New Yorkers staff are first in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. “