Americans are well aware of the nursing home scandal in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo allowed overflow COVID-19 patients to be sent to the worst possible place. Naturally, this had the effect of seeding outbreaks in New York nursing homes, many of which were subsequently ravaged. And when the angry Cuomo is asked about it, he does what he does best — he lashes out at whoever asks the question.

Well, it looks like New York may not be alone. The same thing might have happened next door in Pennsylvania, and perhaps worse. Pennsylvania has over 70,000 cases of COVID-19, with roughly 5,400 deaths. Of these fatalities, a staggering 70 percent (my last count) are in nursing homes. In some counties, the percentages are even higher.

As a Pennsylvania resident, I’ve tracked the data daily. I noticed the disproportionate number of deaths in nursing homes weeks ago. In mid-April, I emailed with an attorney friend and an academic sociologist with a background in long-term care facilities and data analysis. What initially caught my attention was the suddenly high COVID-19 fatality rate in Allegheny County (the county for Pittsburgh). It had shot above 7 percent. This was alarming and strange. It didn’t make sense from data I was seeing on COVID-19 morbidity from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) in particular. UPMC is one of the nation’s largest health-care providers and a cutting-edge research facility, which as early as April 1 held a press conference announcing the possibility that researchers there had a vaccine for COVID-19. UPMC’s overall handling of the virus (which I follow closely as a former UPMC researcher myself) was impressive and inspired confidence. UPMC facilities plainly did not have a COVID-19 fatality rate akin to what the Pennsylvania Department of Health was reporting for Allegheny and other counties.

So, where were the deaths coming from? The answer was clear when looking deeper into data at the website of the Pennsylvania Department of Health: nursing homes. When I examined the striking number of deaths in Allegheny County’s nursing homes and personal care facilities, separating those from the overall numbers, it made a big difference. The fatality rate for COVID-19 cases in Allegheny County outside of those facilities was actually barely 3 percent. And this was true for many counties statewide.

Well, that was mid-April, thousands of deaths ago. It has only gotten worse. I had assumed that the nursing home numbers were a regrettable reflection of a vicious virus unavoidably creeping into these facilities. But unfortunately, the disproportionate presence of the virus may have been caused by Pennsylvania officials sending COVID-19 patients into these facilities.

That possibility is getting major attention across the state. A devastating investigative piece was published in the Bucks County Courier Times (jointly done with reporters from USA Today), a county with a huge number of COVID-19 cases (the vast majority of Pennsylvania’s cases are in eastern counties close to New York and New Jersey). Titled, “States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 residents — Thousands Died,” it documents the disproportionate deaths in Pennsylvania nursing homes:

Coronavirus has spread like wildfire through many nursing homes across the Northeast, and state officials are scrambling to better protect those most vulnerable. Yet the death toll has been devastating.

On March 29, as Pennsylvania, New York and other states began ordering nursing homes to admit medically stable residents infected with the coronavirus, national trade groups warned it could unnecessarily cost more lives.

The health directives put “frail and older adults who reside in nursing homes at risk” and would “result in more people going to the hospital and more deaths,” the American Health Care Association and affiliates said at the time.

A month later, it appears government officials should have heeded the dire call to pursue different pandemic emergency plans.

Note what is alleged: On March 29, Pennsylvania joined New York and other northeastern states in “ordering nursing homes to admit medically stable residents infected with the coronavirus,” despite warnings from groups like the American Health Care Association that such “health directives” could “unnecessarily cost more lives.”

These intrepid government officials should have heeded something known as common sense. Who but a fool would move infected COVID-19 patients into nursing homes? What was option two, moving them into Walmarts?

The article continued, “The death toll is devastating, according to interviews with nursing-home officials, patients’ families, health-care advocates, government officials and from an examination of state records … across the Northeast.” And yet, among the plagued northeast, the infection rate in nursing homes is uniquely bad in Pennsylvania:

At least 3,043 people have died inside New York nursing homes due to COVID-19 complications, or about 17% of the state’s 18,015 deaths as of Wednesday.

In Pennsylvania, about 65% of coronavirus deaths [now closer to 70%] were nursing-home residents, and in counties in the hardest hit southeastern part of the state, long-term care residents account for as much as 80% of county deaths.

New Jersey had 3,200 residents of long-term care homes die due to complications from the virus, about 40% of the statewide total.

About 58% of the deaths in Delaware lived in nursing homes, and 46% of the fatalities in Maryland were at nursing homes.

Pennsylvania’s nursing home deaths are far higher than comparable states. As for how this came about, the report pointed directly to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine:

On March 18, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine directed licensed long-term care facilities to continue admitting new patients, including those discharged from hospitals but unable to go home, and to readmit current patients after hospital stays.

“This may include stable patients who have had the COVID-19 virus,” according to a copy of the guidelines.

Continued admissions was ordered “to alleviate the increasing burden in the acute care settings,” according to the directive.

Pennsylvanians who gasped when they heard that Andrew Cuomo had permitted such directives in New York recoiled in angered amazement when they heard it might have happened in their state, as well.

They were likewise aghast to hear that Dr. Levine removed her own 95-year-old mother from a nursing home. “My mother requested and my sister and I, as her children, complied to move her to another location during the COVID-19 outbreak,” Levine confirmed in a press conference.

Yes, you read that right.  

Click on the link for the rest.

C