Michigan is now the only state among the 19 that have more than 900 Wuhan virus deaths to withholding vital nursing home data.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), has failed to implement any state-level reporting on the number of coronavirus deaths however, local reports tell a devastating story.
Earlier this week Whitmer was asked about the conditions of nursing homes and she refused to give an answer.
“Could you update us on the status of long term care facility reporting. I know we’re transitioning to a new process. Tell us what hasn’t been worked and what we can expect?” the reporter asked at the governor’s daily briefing.
“You see me grabbing my mask, because I’m going to hand this over to Dr. J.,” Whitmer responded as she dodged the question and called the state’s Chief Medical Executive and Chief Deputy Director for Health for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Dr. Joneigh Khaldun to the podium.
VIDEO: @GovWhitmer Still Won’t Answer Why Michigan Isn’t Reporting COVID-19 Nursing Home Data pic.twitter.com/uhNKK7SiOJ
— Michigan Rising Action (@MIRisingAction) May 26, 2020
Khaldun’s response was a joke:
So, great question. So if you go to our website now it will say we are currently updating it because what has occurred we are working with our long term care facilities to make sure we’re getting accurate infommation and that they understand what we’re actually asking them to report. What we found before is that every facility had a different interpretation of how to report so we wanted to fix that.ho
In the meantime, CMS, at the federal level, has actually asked everyone in the country to report in a certain way, so now we’re aligning what we had previously asked our long term care facilities to do with the CMS guidance with the most accurate data when that’s available.
“The Whitmer administration has failed to release accurate nursing home data for months. We now know COVID-19 in nursing homes account for 42% of deaths nationwide yet Michigan still hasn’t released data or a thorough plan to protect the most vulnerable,” Tori Sachs, executive director of Michigan Rising Action, said on Tuesday.
“Gov. Whitmer and the state’s Chief Medical Executive Joneigh Khaldun have both said they are following ‘facts,’ ‘science,’ and ‘data.’ How can Michiganders take that statement seriously if the state doesn’t have data on the most vulnerable population to COVID-19?” Sachs added.
Recent independent studies have estimated that 42% of all coronavirus deaths from 37 states that report this data are from nursing homes. Michigan is the only coronavirus “hotspot” that is not reporting nursing home deaths.
Both New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf have been criticized for their nursing home policies. In New York over 5,000 deaths occurred inside nursing homes and in Pennsylvania, over 68% of all Wuhan virus deaths happened inside a nursing home.
Whitmer is covering up something much bigger than her husband trying to get his boat in the water for Memorial Day weekend.
