ALBANY, N.Y. — The Cuomo administration's reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes drew another round of criticism late Thursday after it was revealed the total death count was stripped from a state report last July.

The report released by the Department of Health last summer had long been criticized for not including the number of nursing home deaths that occurred in hospitals, leading to a drastic undercounting.

Now the reason is more clear: The Cuomo administration pressured the health department to not include the full death count attributed to nursing homes in the report, according to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Instead, the report indicated more than 6,200 nursing-home residents had died, instead of nearly 10,000 at the time who were residents of the homes and either died there or at a hospital.