Witnesses testify about deadly coronavirus toll at New York nursing homes

Jerry Maldonado recalled pressing his mother's nursing home for nearly two weeks about whether any coronavirus infections had surfaced and got no answers until his mother started showing symptoms of the illness.

The Newburgh resident said he confronted the home's nursing director and was told the facility had been forced to admit COVID-19 patients who had been discharged from hospitals.

"I was apoplectic," Maldonado testified on Monday.

Maldonado, whose mother, Luz, died on April 11 at age 82, was one of several dozen witnesses to address state senators and Assembly members in a day-long hearing about the devastating COVID-19 infections in New York nursing homes, the second of two sessions lawmakers held to examine an outbreak that claimed more than 6,500 lives and prepare for a possible next wave of the virus.

Maldonado said his mother had lived at Northern Metropolitan Residential Healthcare Facility, a 120-bed home in Monsey, for nearly five years and suffered from dementia. In a blistering critique of the home's and the state's handling of the coronavirus crisis, he said that families like his were kept in the dark about infections, and that infected residents shared rooms with non-infected residents and were cared for by the same staff.

"I feel that we were deprived of the basic right to know," said Maldonado, telling lawmakers he would have taken his mother to his own home if he had known of the virus cases at Northern Metropolitan and believes she would be alive if he had.

Maldonado blamed a state directive for introducing the coronavirus into his mother's nursing home, saying he believed her life was "cut short due to reckless policy decisions." That March 25 order required nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients who had been discharged from hospitals.

He also questioned the accuracy of the state's count of nursing home fatalities, based on his own family's experience. He said that the draft of his mother's death certificate indicated she died of heart failure, hypertension and dementia, and that the home — which told him it had no ability to administer a COVID-19 test — reluctantly modified that cause to reflect COVID-19 at the family's insistence.

"We need to ask ourselves, how many people like my mother are omitted from the official death count, and why?" Maldonado said.

Three or four other residents appeared to be in the same critical condition as his mother when she got sick, Maldonado testified. State Department of Health figures indicate two Northern Metropolitan residents died from the coronavirus.

State Sen. James Skoufis, a Cornwall Democrat who leads one of the committees holding the hearings, asked Maldonado how the home responded whenever he asked for information about COVID-19 infections.

"Every time I spoke with them through emails, they would ignore that piece of my question," Maldonado answered, adding that the virus spread became "undeniable" after his mother started coughing and developed a fever.

Two statewide representatives of nursing homes testified that the virus likely spread in those facilities partly because of asymptomatic carriers early on the crisis, before that threat was widely known, as well as the shortages of protective equipment and testing. They did not blame the controversial order requiring nursing homes accept discharged COVID-19 patients.

Jim Clyne, president of LeadingAge NY, which represents nonprofit and government-run facilities, told lawmakers that nursing homes in New York City and the surrounding area felt no pressure from that order because most already were taking in COVID-19 patients prior to the directive, since they felt it was part of their mission.

"Nursing homes can care for COVID people safely," Clyne said.

Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association, told lawmakers that nursing homes were "experts in infection control."

State Sen. Jen Metzger, a Rosendale Democrat, asked those two panelists what nursing homes were doing to stockpile protective equipment for another virus wave and if the state should plan for specialty units for nursing home residents with COVID-19.

Hanse answered that such planning is underway, and that the state has required homes to collect a 30-day supply of equipment by the end of August and a 60-day supply by the end of September.

cmckenna@th-record.com