Video: New York State Department of Health Issues Report on Covid-19 in Nursing Homes

Data Indicates COVID-19 Was Introduced Into Nursing Homes by Infected Staff

Report Documents That Peak Staff Infections Correlates With Peak Nursing Home Resident Deaths

Employee Infections Align With Rates in Highly Impacted Regions of State

ALBANY, N.Y. (July 6, 2020) - New York State Commissioner of Health Dr. Howard Zucker: "When we saw the rise in deaths in the nursing homes, the public health leader, scientist, the doctor in me, and most importantly the son with his own recent memories,kept asking himself – 'what happened?' It is important to know why – because it matters – it matters for New York, it matters for the nation, it matters to prevent repeating behaviors, and it matters to bring closure for families."

​"The data shows that the nursing home residents got COVID from the staff, and presumably, also from those who visited them. Unfortunately, we did not understand the disease early on, we did not realize how widespread it was within our community, and therefore, it was able to be introduced into a vulnerable population. As best as we could, using the tools that we have, we looked to determine the relationships between timelines and outcomes, between infectivity and symptomatology, between onset of illness and death. We looked at the facts."

Earlier today, Dr. Zucker announced results of an in-depth analysis of nursing home data that found COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to infected nursing home staff. The full report can be found here.

VIDEO of Dr. Zucker's remarks is available at https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/upPiIs16ln.