Nursing homes are at the center of a couple of new issues facing Onondaga County as it fights the coronavirus.
County Executive Ryan McMahon said Thursday it was as if a "hammer dropped on my head" when he learned that 19 deaths in nursing homes in the county apparently haven't been included in the daily count of COVID-19 deaths. After those figures came in from the state, the county's death count went from 41 to 60.
"19 people I had no clue we lost," McMahon said.
McMahon said there were no new deaths Wednesday, but the total number of cases rose to 1,234.
The county is still waiting for clarification from the state about how deaths in nursing homes are being reported, but McMahon said the communication with the state hasn't been great.
"The communication with the state health department related to nursing homes, has been problematic, and I think we now know information that we did not know, and I think we're a little surprised we didn't know this information," he said.
The other issue with nursing homes, according to McMahon, is that some are dropping off COVID positive patients who are not seriously ill at the hospital. McMahon said that's not good.
"If every nursing home goes and drops them off at the hospital, it's going to look like we have a huge spike in people who need hospital treatment when the reality is, that's not the case," he said.
For now, McMahon said the county is working with all nursing homes in the county, with the goal of finding beds in larger facilities that can take these COVID-positive individuals. He didn't rule out the idea of one facility being devoted to just mildly ill COVID patients.
