Covid-19 coronavirus: New York authorities sent 6300 virus patients to nursing homes

A patient is loaded into an ambulance by emergency medical workers outside Cobble Hill Health Centre last April in Brooklyn, New York. Photo / AP

New York hospitals released more than 6300 recovering coronavirus patients into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic under a controversial, now-scrapped policy.

State officials argued the moves were not to blame for one of America's highest nursing home death tolls.

Governor Andrew Cuomo's Administration, which has taken intense criticism over the policy, instead contended that the virus' rampant spread through the state's nursing homes was propelled by more than 20,000 infected home staffers, many of whom kept going to work unaware they had the virus.

"Facts matter. And those are the facts," state Health Commissioner Dr Howard Zucker said in a news conference.

New York's report came more than a month after AP did its own count finding that hospitals around the state released more than 4500 recovering coronavirus patients to nursing homes under a March 25 Health Department directive that required nursing homes to take recovering coronavirus patients.

New York Governor blasts Trump’s COVID-19 response as U.S. death toll tops 130,000 https://t.co/2mv8yhJJAC pic.twitter.com/6tWM2BSO97

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) July 6, 2020

The directive was intended to help free up hospital beds for the most ill patients as cases surged. But several relatives, patient advocates and nursing administrators who spoke to AP at the time blamed the policy for helping to spread the virus among the state's most fragile residents.

To date, more than 6400 deaths have been linked to the coronavirus in New York's nursing home and long-term care-facilities.

Cuomo, a Democrat, reversed the directive under pressure on May 10, but he has argued for weeks that infected home workers, not released Covid-19 patients, were to blame for a coronavirus spread through nursing homes that he compared to "fire through dry grass."

"It is that the staff got infected. They came to work and they brought in the infection," Cuomo said on June 23. "Now, how do you fix that in the future? I don't know that you really can."

As coronavirus cases continue to surge in Florida, some hospitals in the state are nearing capacity https://t.co/NHqFO33wb6 pic.twitter.com/u2dfpOVTLh

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 6, 2020

New York's health commissioner echoed those remarks in his news conference today, saying: "There's no reason to place blame. If you were to place blame, I would blame coronavirus."

While New York's report doesn't rule out whether the March 25 directive played any role in the thousands of nursing home deaths, it notes that the virus was already present in many homes before they accepted Covid-19 patients from hospitals.

Over 80 per cent of the 310 nursing homes that admitted such patients already had a confirmed or suspected case among residents or staffers, the report says.

The average patient had been hospitalised for nine days, the report says — the same period that it likely takes for the virus to no longer be contagious, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state report also says nursing home resident deaths peaked on April 8 — around the same time as Covid-19 deaths statewide, but nearly a week before the peak of Covid-19 patients from hospitals — a sequence of events the report casts as "suggesting the policy was not the cause."

Nonetheless, the state's data show over 1000 Covid-19 patients entered nursing homes between March 25 and April 8.

More than 20,000 home staffers were infected with Covid-19 in New York between March and late April when the policy was in effect.

- AP