The federal government’s tally of the number of COVID-19 victims in New York exceeds the count released by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration by 11,000, which has followed a much more conservative approach in accounting for deaths from the virus.
The discrepancy in the death count has continued to rise this year, according to an Associated Press analysis, even as the Democrat has come under fire for allegations that his office purposely concealed the number of nursing home resident deaths to protect their reputation.
The official death count in New York state, released daily to the public and on the state Department of Health website, this week stood at around 43,000. But the state has provided the federal government with data showing that roughly 54,000 people have died with COVID-19 as a cause or contributing factor listed on their death certificate.
“It’s kind of weird,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Section at the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “They provide us with the information from the death certificate so they have it. I don’t know why they wouldn’t use those numbers.”
Such a discrepancy can fuel distrust in government counts of COVID-19 deaths, while making it more difficult for individuals to know why others in their community died in the pandemic, experts say.
“We have to make sure that we get it right and that people understand what the numbers are. And how we are using them so that they cannot be misused by people who have a reason to do it,” said Georges Benjamin, physician and CEO. from the American Public Health Association.
The Cuomo government’s tally includes only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths in hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities. That means your count excludes people who died at home, in hospice, in state prisons, or in state homes for the disabled.
It also excludes people who likely died from COVID-19 but never tested positive to confirm the diagnosis. Evidence was scant in the early stages of the New York outbreak. According to city statistics, at least 5,000 New Yorkers likely died of COVID-19 without testing positive.
The gap has widened even as testing has become more available, with CDC data showing at least 3,200 more deaths from COVID-19 in the state than New York’s own tracker so far in 2021. .
A spokesperson for the New York Department of Health said the state’s count is accurate and declined to comment on why it reports its lower COVID-19 death count in press releases and on its coronavirus tracker instead of the Highest figure from the CDC.
“The Department of Health and state facility regulators have gone to great lengths to ensure this data is accurate and reliable, and that process will continue long after this pandemic to provide a complete picture once the data is finalized. “spokesman Jeffrey Hammond said in an email to The Associated Press.
Other states, such as California, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have adopted approaches in line with the CDC, including in the fatality count all cases in which COVID-19 is an associated or contributing factor. Texas, however, only counts one death from COVID-19 in cases where the death certificate indicates that the virus is the primary cause.
Generally, state death counts are higher than the federal government because it takes time for the CDC to count the records collected in the states.
“The feds are always going to be behind,” says Benjamin. “They have to do their due diligence to validate the numbers that they have. Most likely, the feds have a lower number than the states.”
New York’s refusal to share details comes amid months-long scrutiny of how the state has reported COVID-19 data.
Federal prosecutors, the state attorney general’s office and the state Assembly judicial committee are conducting separate investigations after the Cuomo administration downplayed the number of nursing home resident deaths by excluding all patients who died. after being transferred to hospitals. Cuomo used those lower numbers last year to wrongly claim that New York had a much lower percentage of nursing home residents dying from COVID-19 than other states.
“Unfortunately, New York State has chosen to politicize epidemiological information, so I think it has lost all credibility about what is the best estimate of deaths from COVID in New York State,” said the professor of the CUNY Dennis Nash.
New York City health authorities, which keep their own separate death tally, have asked the state to clarify its reporting practices, according to spokesman Bill Neidhardt. The city’s website reports the same number of COVID-19 deaths as the CDC.
“CDC, WHO, those are the standard epidemiological ways of counting mortality, counting positivity,” said city council spokesman Bill Neidhardt. “That’s what we reflect. I can’t tell you why the state numbers are different.”
Visit the NY1 News page with our special coverage on the coronavirus:
– .
