NY to require virus testing for nursing home staffers

May 11, 2020 Marina Villaneuve and Jennifer Peltz Associated Press

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday that police officers would start limiting access to Brooklyn’s Domino Park. Photo: Lore Croghan/Brooklyn Eagle

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York nursing homes must start twice-weekly coronavirus testing for all staffers and will no longer be sent COVID-19 patients leaving hospitals, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday after facing criticism over the handling of nursing facility outbreaks. New York City is also responding to complaints about racial disparities in enforcement of social distancing by ramping up a corps of city workers to try to keep people in line without involving police.

Here are the latest coronavirus developments in New York:

New rules for nursing homes

The new testing requirements and ban on hospitals sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes came a day after an AP report in which residents’ relatives, nursing home watchdogs and politicians from both parties criticized the Cuomo administration’s policies on both.

The administration second-guessed a state directive as requiring nursing homes to take on new residents infected with COVID-19 — an order that critics said accelerated outbreaks in facilities that are prime breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

Of the nation’s more than 26,600 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, a fifth of them — over 5,350 — are in New York, according to a count by The Associated Press.

That’s the highest number of nursing home deaths in the country, though other states have also struggled to control the virus in nursing facilities. Indeed, they account for a higher percentage of coronavirus deaths in most other states, Cuomo said.

Critics have faulted New York for taking weeks to release the number of deaths in individual homes, for still not releasing the number of cases in homes and for not conducting or requiring widespread testing in facilities.

Now, workers will be tested twice a week, Cuomo said at a news briefing. Residents are being tested as much as possible, he said.

A patient was loaded into the back of an ambulance by emergency medical workers outside Cobble Hill Health Center on Friday. Photo: John Minchillo/AP

A March 25 state health department directive said nursing homes couldn’t refuse new or returning residents because they tested positive for the virus. The policy, similar to one in neighboring New Jersey, was intended to help free up hospital beds for the sickest patients as cases surged.

Now, “we’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” Cuomo said Sunday. He said such patients would be accommodated elsewhere, such as sites originally set up as temporary hospitals.

The new policy still allows nursing homes to take some people with COVID-19, like those who are at home and need care. But hospitals are responsible for finding alternatives for the patients they discharge, and nursing facilities shouldn’t take on coronavirus patients if unable to care for them, Cuomo said.

The Democrat also emphasized that nursing homes should transfer any person they can’t care for.

Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association and New York State Center for Assisted Living, said the long-term care industry groups approve of Cuomo’s new nursing home policy and his testing directive. But he said state assistance will be needed to increase on-site availability of testing for employees.

Social distancing “ambassadors”

After an outcry over racial disparities in New York City’s enforcement of social distancing, the mayor planned Sunday to double the ranks of non-police workers trying to persuade people to comply with the policy.

The number of city workers deployed as “social distancing ambassadors” will grow by next weekend from around 1,000 to 2,300, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an online media briefing.

“More and more, the emphasis will be on a communicative, encouraging approach,” the Democrat said, while noting that enforcement through ticketing “will still be there when needed.”

The city didn’t immediately have information on social distancing arrests or summonses, if any, over the weekend. De Blasio reiterated there have been relatively few — under 10 summonses a day citywide — but that enforcement needs to be done “fairly and consistently in all communities.”

Criticism has arisen along with videos of violent arrests — including scenes of a police officer running at a black man and throwing him to the ground for mouthing off and an officer punching a man in the head as he lay pinned to a sidewalk — and statistics on the racial breakdown of police action taken in the name of curbing the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

NYPD data released Friday showed that of the 374 summonses issued through May 5 for violating distancing orders, 52 percent were given to black people and 30 percent to Hispanic people.

The mayor on Friday said those statistics show “something’s wrong.” He pledged more training and clearer protocols for officers.

Citing such numbers, police reform advocates have pressed the city to stop using police to enforce rules that require people to wear masks and stay 6 feet apart from anyone who doesn’t live in their own household.

De Blasio said Friday that police officers would start limiting access to three New York City parks, including Brooklyn’s Domino Park, where passers-by have captured — and shared — images of predominantly white, young people gathering without masks.

The city’s social distancing enforcement has also brought complaints from some Hasidic Jews after police broke up large public funerals in Brooklyn. And civil rights advocates raised questions after police issued at least one social distancing summons at a small protest organized by an LGBT+ group outside a Manhattan hospital last weekend.