#NY Health Department sued for ‘hiding’ nursing home COVID-19 deaths

The state Health Department is illegally withholding information about the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 in hospitals so it can intentionally undercount fatalities and tout New York’s response to the pandemic, a new lawsuit charges.

The Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany-based think tank, filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the data on Aug. 3 and was later told that it couldn’t have the records until Nov. 5, the court papers filed Friday allege.

The explanation given was that “a diligent search for responsive documents is still being conducted,” according to the Empire Center’s suit filed in Albany state Supreme Court.

But daily tallies of all nursing home residents who’ve died from the coronavirus, “both within nursing home facilities and elsewhere,” are contained in the state’s Health Emergency Response Data System, or HERDS, according to the suit.

The Empire Center says there’s “no reason” why the Health Department “hasn’t already disclosed the information” and accuses officials of “hiding it without justification.”

The Empire Center also alleges that the state’s official count of at least 6,600 COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes “omits potentially thousands of nursing home residents who died in hospitals after being transferred from their nursing homes.”

“Absent deaths outside the nursing home facilities, New York compares very favorably to most other states in terms of COVID-19 nursing home fatalities,” court papers say.

“Governor Andrew Cuomo and [Health Commissioner Dr. Howard] Zucker have relied on the death toll tally absent deaths occurring outside of facilities to claim that New York’s nursing home response was better than most other states.”

Cuomo has come under bipartisan attack for a since-rescinded, March 25 Health Department directive that required nursing homes to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals — and which is now under review by the US Justice Department.

The Empire Center’s suit, which was filed by the non-profit Government Justice Center, seeks a court order forcing the Health Department to turn over the records within five days, as well as payment of its legal fees and court courts.

In an email, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called the suit a “publicity stunt from an arm of the far-right advocacy industrial complex looking to ‎distract from the many many failings of [the] federal government during this pandemic.”

“Want to talk about transparency? Reveal your shadowy funders,” he said of the Empire Center.