‘Heartbreaking’ report shows virus ravaging NY nursing homes

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The despair wrought on nursing homes by the coronavirus was laid bare Friday in a state survey identifying numerous New York facilities where multiple patients died over the past few weeks.

Nineteen of the state’s nursing homes reported 20 or more deaths linked to the pandemic, the survey said.

One Brooklyn home, the Cobble Hill Health Center, was listed as having 55 deaths.

Officials at the facility, which has more than 300 beds located in a 19th-century former hospital in a tony section of Brooklyn, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

Four more homes, in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island, were listed as having at least 40 deaths.

“These have been surreal times, and we are suffering, as is everybody else,” said Dr Roy Goldberg, medical director at Kings Harbor Multicare Center, a 720-bed home in the Bronx which reported 45 fatalities.

“Every death is heartbreaking,” he said.

The survey’s release came after days of news media reports about homes so stricken by the virus that bodies had to be stacked inside storage rooms while families struggled to get information about isolated loved ones.

The list was far from complete.

It was based on a survey sent by the state asking for details. Nursing homes had until 2:00 p.m. Thursday to respond.

“We only know what they tell us,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

Through Tuesday, at least 2,477 nursing home patients have been killed by the virus in New York, according to state figures.

That amounts to about one in five of the state’s virus-related fatalities.

In Connecticut, nursing home residents account for 375 of the state’s 971 virus deaths.

Until this week, officials in several states had declined to identify nursing homes with deadly outbreaks, saying patients deserved privacy or citing challenges in determining whether some extremely frail patients had died of the virus, or other causes.

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