when he was governor of new york, andrew cuomo repeatedly tried to talk up his handling of the covid pandemic and tried to downplay the number of covid deaths in new york the article on his final day in office on monday, while most aides put the death toll at 43,404. but the numbers released by cuomo s office include only laboratory confirmed covid deaths. reported by state system that only collects data from hospitals, nursing homes, and adult care facilities. the numbers do not include people who died in hospice, in prisons, homeless, disabled, or those whose doctors believe died of covid-19 but never got a positive test. remember, in the early months of the pandemic, those tests were rare. so, when new york s new governor kathy hochul took office on tuesday, she released all the numbers, and the death toll went from above 43,000 to more than 55,000, increase, as you say, nearly 12,000, and hochul said this.