State Health Dept. finally reports New York’s true COVID death toll

 

The tally of New Yorkers killed by the coronavirus pandemic stands at more than 55,000 people, the state Health Department confirmed late Tuesday — far more than the 43,000 long reported by now-departed Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

DOH officials released the revised tallies just hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul was sworn into office, finally bringing the state’s death count into line with figures long published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins University.

“We’re now releasing more data than had been released before, publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what’s being displayed by the CDC,” Hochul told MSNBC on Wednesday morning. “There’s just a lot of things that weren’t happening, and I’m going to make them happen. Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration.”

Government watchdog groups applauded Hochul’s move.

“It’s a good first step by Hochul,” said Bill Hammond, a health care policy expert at the conservative-leaning think tank The Empire Center, which aggressively pressed state officials over their handling of nursing home safety measures during the pandemic.

“The higher COVID death totally is significantly important,” he added. “She’s acknowledging how bad things got. She’s not sugarcoating the problem. Cuomo was trying to keep the numbers as low as he could.” 

The new state figures show the number COVID-related deaths in New York State as of Tuesday totaled 55,395.

It’s a significant jump from the 43,415 that would have been reported under the old system, which only tallied deaths in hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities.

The Cuomo administration’s decision to only release those partial tallies in its daily public summaries of COVID-19 data had come under increasing fire in recent weeks. 

Those reports did not include New Yorkers who died from the pandemic at home, or in jails or prisons or in other non-hospital settings, or doing the early days of the pandemic when testing was not available, providing an incomplete picture of the true toll COVID-19 took on the Empire State.

Those reports did not include New Yorkers who died from the pandemic at home, or in jails or prisons or in other non-hospital settings, providing an incomplete picture of the true toll COVID-19 took on the Empire State.

The tally is more than the 43,000 long reported by now-former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images

The Cuomo administration only reported COVID-19 deaths at hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities, and did not include New Yorkers who died at home or in jails.

Brendan McDermid/REUTERS

However, state officials did quietly provide the total count to the federal authorities at the CDC, which began providing them in its own datasets — raising rounds of questions about the information published locally by the Cuomo administration.

The Cuomo administration used similar tactics to make the number of nursing home deaths caused by the coronavirus appear dramatically smaller, tallying just those residents who died in nursing homes and not those who were taken to the hospital before passing away.

It only released the true figures after Attorney General Letitia James released a damning report that highlighted the vast discrepancies between the figures published by the Cuomo administration and information tallied by compiling death certificates.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo also made the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths appear dramatically smaller by tallying just the residents who died in nursing homes and not those who were taken to the hospital.

State Health Department reports NY's true COVID death toll (nypost.com)