ALBANY COUNTY — When asked about his response to a New York Post story that Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa had said the Cuomo administration withheld the state’s nursing-home death toll so the numbers would not be “used against us” by the federal government, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy responded with a quote from Winston Churchill.

“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber,” he said.

McCoy, at his press conference on Friday morning, went on to describe his own decision-making process in releasing information on the COVID-19 deaths at Shaker Place, the county’s nursing home.

In April, McCoy had been defensive about not revealing earlier the positive tests for COVID-19 at the county’s nursing home although, after that, he made those numbers part of his regular daily reports.

In recent months, McCoy has daily released the number of people infected as workers or residents of congregant settings.

When the first Shaker Place resident died of COVID-19, McCoy said, he was faced with a choice of reporting it or not. He said he had learned from being at war, “It eventually comes out.”

McCoy went on, “I wanted to be transparent … I self-consciously decided, ‘I’m going to read it out because people have a right to know.’ When you’re going through a health-care crisis … if that’s a disconnect, it’s not going to work.”

On April 17, 2002, the state had released a report on nursing-home fatalities from COVID-19, whether the patients died at the facility or at a hospital; Albany County was listed then with three nursing-home deaths. Specific nursing homes were listed in the report then only if six or more deaths occurred there; no specific nursing homes in Albany County were listed last April.

As of Feb. 4, 2021, that same Department of Health webpage lists Albany County as having 94 confirmed COVID nursing-home deaths with 28 out-of-facility nursing home deaths, such as at a hospital; it also lists one COVID-presumed death for an Albany County nursing home.

As of Feb. 4, Shaker Place is listed by the state’s Department of Health as having 10 confirmed COVID nursing home deaths and five confirmed out-of-facility COVID deaths.

The other eight Albany County nursing homes had the following confirmed COVID-19 deaths reported by the State’s Department of Health as of Feb. 4:

— Nine at Bethlehem Common Care Center, four out-of-facility;

— Seven at Daughters of Sarah, two out-of-facility;

— Seven at Eddy Village Green;

— Eleven at Hudson Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, one out-of-facility;

— Eleven at Our Lady of Mercy Life Center, two out-of-facility, and one COVID-presumed death at the facility;

— Fifteen at St. Peter’s Nursing and Rehabilitation Center;

— Twenty-one at Teresian House Nursing Home, seven out-of-facility; and

— Three at The Grand Rehabilitation and Nursing Center at Guilderland, seven out-of-facility.

The state’s webpage also lists the confirmed and presumed COVID-19 deaths for adult care facilities, of which seven are listed for Albany County: Atria Guilderland, Atria Shaker, Elderwood Village of Colonie, Massry Residence at Daughters of Sarah, Peregrine Senior Living at Colonie, Promenade at University Place, and Terrace at Beverwyck.

The tally for confirmed COVID-19 deaths and for presumed COVID-19 deaths for all seven of these adult care facilities in Albany County is zero.

McCoy said on Friday that “things change” during the evolving pandemic and said he couldn’t speak for others.

“We had our issues with the Department of Health … the data wasn’t matching up,” he said of the state numbers.

Nursing homes are required to report deaths only to the state, not to the county and Albany County sometimes was unaware of nursing-home deaths right away.

“It made our job harder ...,” said McCoy. “If you know you have an outbreak, you can get there.”

He concluded, “I can only lead with the information I’m given.”

Transcript: “We froze”

On Friday, the governor’s office released a transcript of the remarks that DeRosa had made during a Zoom conference call with state legislators, upon which the New York Post first reported.

“I was explaining that when we received the DOJ inquiry,” DeRosa said of the federal Department of Justice in a statement, “we needed to temporarily set aside the legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first. We informed the houses of this at the time. We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DOJ, and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout.”

The conference call with state legislators followed the release of a Jan. 28 report from Attorney General Letitia James that found more nursing-home residents died of COVID-19 than data from the state’s health department reflected. The state had not included hospital deaths of nursing-home residents in its tally and only began releasing the numbers after the attorney general’s report.

According to the transcript, Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat representing District 39 in the Hudson Valley, prompted DeRosa’s response by stating, “You’re not going to convince me that you could not have done this audit faster than six months’ time. I believe you started the audit a few weeks ago when this all started to bubble over.”

“I don’t know that this is going to satisfy you, but it’s the truth and the truth works almost every time,” DeRosa responded. “The letter comes in at the end of August and right around the same time, President Trump turns this into a giant political football.

“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes, he starts going after Murphy, starts going after Newsom, starts going after Gretchen Whitmer,” she said, naming Democratic governors Philip Murphy of New Jersey, Gavin Newsom of California, and Whitmer of Michigan. 

“He directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us,” DeRosa went on about Trump. “He finds one person at DOJ, who since has been fired because this person is now known to be a political hack, who sends letters out to all of these different governors.

“And basically, we froze, because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys, what we start saying was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

DeRosa went on to say the federal investigation was never formally opened.

She also went on to describe “a massive data dump.”

“On April 17,” DeRosa said, “DOH sent out a notification to all of the nursing homes it regulates and says prospectively, tell us anyone that died in the facility, anyone you think died of COVID in the facility … And the nursing homes took that to mean I’m going to look backward and guess, essentially, that you believe was confirmed COVID in a hospital and that you think was presumed in a hospital. 

“All of a sudden, at the end of April, you get a massive data dump from 600 nursing homes where they’re reporting back to January and saying presumed COVID.

“And DOH, in the middle of what was still the height of the pandemic, while we were scrambling on a daily basis to make sure that hospitals weren’t overwhelmed and collapsing, when we were trying to make sure that people were getting the care that they needed, when we were still making major decisions about what sectors of the economy would be safe to reopen or close, when there was still massive PPE shortages and while we were being shot at on a daily basis from Donald Trump — that we needed to go through these reams of data ….

“And none of it was reliable. It was based on initials. It was based on the data that they thought they died in the hospital because they didn’t know for sure. It was based on comorbidities … all these things and they’re guessing that because it was around that time, maybe it was COVID. This was a massive undertaking and it was happening while we were still at the height of the pandemic. That’s when that data dump happened.

“So, I'm just asking for a little bit of appreciation of the context … We are going to try to do better …. So, we do apologize. I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intent to put you in that political position with the Republicans.” 

Response

On Friday, Senate Republicans demanded a special session to revoke Governor Andrew Cuomo’s emergency powers and repeated their call for immediate investigation into the “nursing home cover-up.” Some Democrats chimed in, too.

Press releases arrived fast and furious on Friday; among them were these statements.

“The leaked tape of the secret meeting held between administration officials and legislative Democrats confirms that not only did Cuomo’s office deliberately withhold information from the public and the Legislature, they did it to obstruct justice and dodge a federal investigation,” said GOP Senator Robert Ortt.

“This obstruction of justice must be investigated on the federal and state levels and my colleagues in the majority should finally use their subpoena power to get the truth under oath,” said Republican Senator Jim Tedisco.

“It’s crystal clear that Governor Cuomo and his highest appointed official, Secretary DeRosa, along with New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, among others, formed a clique within state government dedicated to burying the awful truth about preventable nursing home deaths,” said Gerard Kassar, chairman of the state’s Coservative Party.

The minority leader of the Albany County Legislature, Frank Mauriello, said, “Gov. Cuomo has betrayed our trust and failed the state of New York. I’m calling for his immediate resignation.”

“New Yorkers expect their state government to function on basic, bedrock principles — including transparency,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy who represents much of Albany County. “Rather than pointing fingers and continuing to politicize what has been a tragic number of lives lost, the state legislature and the governor must work together to restore New Yorkers’ faith in openness and more broadly, good government at the state level.

“Like most New Yorkers,” her statement went on, “I appreciated the governor’s leadership at the height of the pandemic given an absence of leadership from the White House.

“That said, the state legislature needs to revisit the emergency authorities granted when the pandemic began, and I support the efforts to restore the balance of power.”