At Least 14 New York Nursing Homes Have Had More Than 25 Virus Deaths

The homes that have been hit hardest are the Cobble Hill Health Center, a 364-bed nonprofit facility in Brooklyn, which reported 55 deaths, and the Kings Harbor Multicare Center, a for-profit, 720-bed facility in the Bronx, which had 45.

Until the state released its partial accounting Friday, families with relatives in nursing homes had repeatedly been denied information that was unavailable from official sources and often impossible to get from the homes themselves.

Families said their inability to get answers about whether relatives were at risk went back to mid-March, when visitors were barred from entering nursing homes.

New York's nursing homes, more than those in any other state, have been devastated by the virus. As of Tuesday, 2,500 deaths had been linked to such facilities — an increase of more than 1,000 in less than a week. Nearly a quarter of the virus-related deaths in the state involved nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

The newly released data, which the Health Department had said for weeks it would not provide to protect residents’ privacy, included just 69 facilities in 13 counties — a fraction of the 613 licensed nursing homes in the state.

Asked Thursday why officials were taking so long to release the data, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said nursing homes were “dealing with hellacious situations” — multiple health crises, staff shortages, a lack of protective masks and gowns — that made it difficult for some to file the necessary paperwork on time. Cuomo said the state would release data on more homes as they became available.

Responding to the release of the data, ArchCare, which is affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York and operates four nonprofit homes in New York state, called the focus on deaths misleading. Among ArchCare’s properties is the Mary Manning Walsh Home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, which, state records show, has had 31 deaths.

“Reducing the battle against coronavirus to a simple tally of lives lost ignores multiple realities and does a tremendous disservice to the thousands of dedicated health care workers who are putting their lives on the line each day to care for ArchCare’s 1,700 residents and the tens of thousands of other vulnerable nursing home residents across the state,” the agency said in a statement.

In New Jersey, the loss of life has been almost as severe. As of Friday, 1,530 nursing home residents had died of the virus, according to the health commissioner, Judith Persichilli.

The new information for New York comes too late for Ernest Afflitto, who said he had been unable to get information about his cousin Dominic Garritanno, a resident of the King David Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Brooklyn, for the roughly 10 days before Garritanno died of the virus April 3.

“The phone rang and rang,” Afflitto said.

The data might not have helped anyway: As of Friday, the state had not released numbers for the King David home.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .