From The Wall Street Journal:

Report findings run counter to accusations that a directive from the state led to deaths at facilities across New York.

Nearly 6,500 nursing-home residents died, or are presumed to have died, from Covid-19 in New York.

The novel coronavirus was introduced into New York nursing homes by infected staff, and infections among nursing-home workers correlate with the timing of peak resident deaths, according to a new study by New York state health officials.

The findings and data, released in a report on Monday, run counter to accusations by nursing-home executives, families of patients and advocates who have said a March 25 directive from the state led to infections and deaths at facilities across New York. The directive required nursing homes to accept, or readmit, Covid-19-positive patients from hospitals.

After mounting criticism, the state in mid-May reversed the directive.

The most recent data from the state shows that nearly 6,500 nursing-home residents died, or are presumed to have died, from Covid-19. There are 613 nursing-home facilities statewide with some 100,000 residents, according to the state.

In all, nearly 25,000 New Yorkers have died from Covid-19, according to the state.

The state’s report found that infections among nursing-home workers align with the infection rates in highly impacted areas, and that the quality of a nursing home wasn’t a factor in fatalities. Self-reported data from the homes shows that a quarter of the approximately 158,000 nursing-home workers in the state were infected with the virus between March and early June 2020, according to the state’s report.

Speaking at a press conference Monday, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said that there wasn’t a reason to place blame for the spread of the virus on nursing-home and health-care workers.

No one knew that the virus was in New York in February, said Dr. Zucker, citing research released last week by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“If you’re going to place blame, I would blame the Coronavirus, Covid-19. That’s where I would put the blame on all this,” Dr. Zucker said.

‘You had this political conspiracy theory that the deaths in nursing homes were preventable,’ said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday during a press briefing that the state’s report disproved a conspiracy that the state’s March 25 order was responsible for the deaths.

“You had this political conspiracy theory that the deaths in nursing homes were preventable,” said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat. “That has no basis in fact. It was pure politics and it was ugly politics, and now the report has the facts. The facts tell the exact opposite story.”

George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU, which represents 60,000 unionized nursing-home workers in New York, said in a statement that caregivers did everything they could to support residents “at great physical and emotional cost, in many cases without adequate personal protective equipment and while being denied needed paid sick time.”

Across the health-care industry, workers struggled to get testing and adequate personal protective equipment. The state said in its report that it gave some 8.5 million pieces of personal protective equipment to nursing-home workers and others over the course of the crisis.

Stephen B. Hanse, president and chief executive of the New York State Health Facilities Association, a trade group representing nursing homes, said that the data nursing homes have been required to report to the state has shifted several times and has been confusing for operators. During the onset of the crisis, said Mr. Hanse, policy makers focused on hospitals and increasing hospital capacity, not on nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, which are the most vulnerable communities.

“Really, the recognition now is that we need to do anything and everything to safeguard the residents of nursing homes,” said Mr. Hanse.

Read More From: The Wall Street Journal