Elkan Abramowitz, who is representing Cuomo's office, said the administration was hesitant to release the numbers because they were unsure if they were reliable.
"The chamber was never satisfied that the numbers that they were getting from DOH were accurate," Abramowitz told the Times.
The Times also highlighted a Health Department report that was allegedly rewritten by Cuomo senior advisers a number of times. The final draft of that report insisted that admissions coming from hospitals were "not a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities," instead saying that staff were the likely cause of spreading infections.
However, a previous draft included a section that put the number of nursing home residents at more than 9,700, which was much higher than the administration was saying at the time, the report said. It also stated that about "35 percent" of deaths in the state were nursing home residents — but the report released to the public was changed to say 21 percent.