ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. — With the elderly in Western New York being particularly vulnerable to dying from the coronavirus, many relatives of nursing home patients have been concerned over the death rates in area nursing homes.
Now, we have a clearer picture of just how many deaths have happened in local nursing homes. Up to April 15, three area nursing homes made up half of the COVID-19 deaths for people living in nursing homes or adult care facilities.
On Friday, New York State released a list of deaths by nursing home, as of April 15. The state also later released death totals by county for people who died from COVID-19 and had been living in nursing homes or in adult care.
The state did not include names of nursing homes with less than five deaths.
In Erie County, three nursing homes are reported to have six or more COVID-19 positive or presumptive-positive deaths.
Garden Gate Heath Care Facility has had 11, Harris Hill Nursing Home has had nine, and Father Baker Manor has had six.
On Thursday Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted that based on Erie County Department of Health data, 42 of the 107, or 39 percent, of deaths up to Thursday are associated with long-term care facilities in Erie County.
Friday's state list of nursing home/adult care COVID-19 deaths by county shows that as of April 15, 46 people who had been living in nursing homes, and four people who had been living in adult care facilities, had died from coronavirus.
That means, that based on the state's data, Garden Gate, Harris Hill Nursing Home, and Father Baker Manor, make up just over half (26 of the 50) deaths within nursing homes or adult care in Erie County.
On Friday, Poloncarz tweeted that based on current data, 50.4 percent of all deaths in Erie County have been someone over 80 years old.