The Justice Department demanded that several Democrat-led states hand over data on nursing home deaths due to COVID-19 to help it decide whether to launch a large-scale investigation.
“Today the Justice Department requested COVID-19 data from the governors of states that issued orders which may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents,” the Justice Department announced in a statement Wednesday, naming New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, four states with Democratic governors.
The Justice Department maintained that the four states allowed nursing homes to readmit residents who had tested positive for the coronavirus, leading to widespread infections and deaths in long-term care facilities.
The data will inform the decision by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division whether to launch an investigation under the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects the civil rights of people in state-run nursing homes.
Each Democrat-run state has been criticized for a high share of fatalities in nursing homes where the most vulnerable groups live. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been criticized for his March 25 order mandating that long-term care facilities take residents regardless of a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 diagnosis so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. State health department data suggests that more than 6,000 nursing home residents have died of the virus, but that count includes only those who died in the residences, not those who died in hospitals.
When the state health department released a report in July mean to squash allegations that Cuomo’s order led to thousands of unnecessary deaths, he said that he was following guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, also said that nursing homes were not at fault.
“If you’re going to place blame, I would blame the coronavirus, Covid-19,” Zucker said last month.
The DOJ release ended by saying that the request for data and subsequent investigations “are not accusations of fault or wrongdoing.” The department did not offer any timeline for completing the investigation once the governors hand the data over.
