BUFFALO, N.Y. — Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz was delivered a rare rebuke of county government’s COVID response.
Unanimously, the County Legislature passed a resolution directing the health department to publicly disclose when a nursing home has a virus outbreak.
It is the latest rejection of the Poloncarz administration’s silence on COVID outbreaks. As recently as Wednesday, Poloncarz explained his policy is to only disclose nursing outbreaks when “there is a risk to the general public.”
The Erie County Health Department has also cited HIPAA, the federal health privacy law, as its reason to not reveal clusters of cases within nursing homes. That’s even when other government agencies have released information.
An example of this occurred two weeks ago when a reported 61 cases of COVID were found inside the Comprehensive Rehabilitation & Nursing Center in Williamsville. State and federal officials both acknowledged the outbreak and that a strike team has visited the facility.
But the county health department declined to answer all questions about the facility. That led the New York Coalition for Open Government to issue a statement calling on Erie County Government “to be more transparent.”
An editorial from The Buffalo News went further, stating Poloncarz and Health Commissioner Gale Burstein had “no good reason” to be silent about nursing home outbreaks and described the two as having a “fetish for secrecy.”
But it appears the Poloncarz administration is unmoved by the criticism.
A spokesman referred 2 On Your Side to the county executive’s remarks from Wednesday where he did not indicate any interest in changing the policy on COVID disclosures.
