NY NURSING HOME COVID DEATHS ON THE RISE

Nursing homes in New York announced last week that COVID remains a serious risk for their residents, and they reported at least 200 weekly deaths for the last three weeks of December, according to a report.
The Wall Street Journal reported there have been more than 8,100 confirmed and presumed coronavirus deaths at these facilities in the state. 
The paper said that stats and the federal death toll have discrepancies because the state does not count deaths which include residents who died at hospitals. As we have been reporting, the federal government did not mandate nursing homes report virus deaths until mid-May, after the first wave of fatalities eased. 
We have also reported Governor Cuomo made it mandatory that elder care facilities take in hospital patients who had the coronavirus. 
According to a report from the New York State Department of Health, “6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to [nursing home] facilities” following Cuomo’s mandate that nursing homes accept the readmission of COVID-positive patients from hospitals.
As we reported in the Trends Journal, on 25 March, New York State’s Health Department, following “killer” Cuomo’s orders, issued a directive stating, “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” The directive also said nursing homes “are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
Cuomo reversed that rule in May.
Maggie Barnes, a spokeswoman for a nursing home at the Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital in the state, told the paper it is a serious challenge trying to keep residents safe.
“It takes so little for this to wiggle its way into a facility, and it’s such a vulnerable population. And then you’re chasing it, playing defense rather than offense.”
TRENDPOST: NBC News pointed out last month that over 39 percent of deaths tied to COVID involved residents and staffers in nursing homes across the U.S.:

“’As early as March or April we were advocating for families to be able to even get information about the state of their loved ones,’ Elaine Ryan, vice president of state advocacy and strategic innovation at AARP told the news network. ‘We were asking, ‘what’s happening? Do the staff have enough PPE? Is there any infection control?’ The lack of transparency by nursing homes early on was just extraordinary.’”

The reason these facilities were able to be about as transparent as Beijing is with WHO scientists is because, in many cases, these homes have politicians in their pockets.
The Guardian reported in May – during the catastrophe at the facilities in New York – that in 2018, when Governor Andrew Cuomo was in a tough campaign for office, he received a “flood of cash” from the Greater New York Hospital Association, a lobbying group for hospital systems, including some that own nursing homes. 
Last March, the donation seemed to pay dividends. Cuomo signed a new law that “quietly” shielded these hospitals from the threat of lawsuits tied to the virus. (The law was eventually rolled back in August.) 
As we have continually reported, rather than taking measures to prevent those most susceptible to the virus, politicians and the COVID Cops target young people gathering at bars and lockdown restaurants, despite a 1.4 percent virus infection rate, destroying millions of businesses and tens of millions of lives with lockdown rules that lack scientific data.