New York hospitals released more than 6,300 coronavirus patients recovering in nursing homes during the pandemic’s heyday under a controversial and now ruled-out policy, state officials said Monday, but argued that it was not the fault of one of the highest nursing home deaths in the country. tolls
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, which has come under intense criticism of the policy, said the rampant spread of the virus through the state’s nursing homes was fueled by more than 20,000 infected employees in the home, many of whom continued to work. not knowing they had the virus.
“Facts matter. And those are the facts, ”said state health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker at a press conference.
The New York report came more than a month after The Associated Press made its own count and found that hospitals across the state released more than 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes under a Department directive. March 25 Health that required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.
The directive was intended to help free hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases increased. But several family members, patient advocates, and nursing administrators who spoke to the AP at the time blamed the policy of helping to spread the virus among the state’s most fragile residents. To date, more than 6,400 deaths have been linked to coronavirus in New York’s nursing home and long-term care facilities.
Cuomo, a Democrat, reversed the directive under pressure on May 10, but has argued for weeks that infected home workers, not released to COVID-19 patients, were to blame for a coronavirus spread through nursing homes which he compared to “dry fire”. grass.”
He noted Monday that it was not well understood from the outset how easily the virus could be spread by people without symptoms.
“No one knew what they were talking about for a long time. That is the conclusion here, ”he told reporters in New York.
The health commissioner said there was “no reason to blame” anyone.
“If you had to blame, I would blame the coronavirus,” said Zucker.
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The state’s findings did not deter Republicans from seeking investigations into deaths in the state’s nursing homes. And some nursing home groups remain convinced that the March 25 order was a bad idea.
“Bringing even one instance of COVID to a nursing home is not in anyone’s best interest,” said Stephen Hanse, who heads a nursing home association called the New York State Health Facilities Association and the State Assisted Living Center. from New York.
While the New York report does not rule out whether the March 25 directive played any role in the thousands of deaths in nursing homes, it notes that the virus was already present in many homes before COVID-19 hospital patients were accepted. More than 80 percent of the 310 nursing homes that admitted such patients already had a confirmed or suspected case among residents or staff, according to the report.
According to the report, the average patient had been hospitalized for nine days, the same period it would likely take for the virus to no longer be contagious, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The state report also says that nursing home resident deaths peaked on April 8, about the same time as COVID-19 deaths statewide, but almost a week before the peak of COVID patients -19 in hospitals: a sequence of events that the report throws as “what the policy suggests was not the cause”.
However, state data shows that more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients entered nursing homes between March 25 and April 8.
Meanwhile, more than 20,000 domestic workers were infected with COVID-19 in New York between March and the end of April, when the policy was in effect.
The head of a union representing 60,000 nursing home workers in New York said they went out of their way to care for residents.
“They did it at great physical and emotional cost, in many cases without the proper personal protective equipment and although they were denied paid sick time,” said George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU.
New York officials have said the March 25 directive was never intended to compel nursing homes to bring in patients who were not equipped to care, and that they should have spoken if that was the case. Authorities have also noted that some other states, including neighboring New Jersey, had similar policies.
KenMichael Dowling, CEO of the Northwell Health Hospital chain, which sent more than 1,700 COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, according to the AP count, said those who claim that nursing home admission policies for Hospitals caused the deaths “are not supported by the facts.”
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Nursing home residents’ advocate Richard Mollot said that while the report might answer some questions about the devastating spread of the virus through the facility, more important and underlying issues remain, such as the industry’s history of lapse of infection control.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of blame,” said Mollot, executive director of the Community Long-Term Care Coalition.
