Dozens — if not hundreds — of coronavirus deaths in New York City will not be included in the Big Apple’s grim tally, because victims died at home without being tested, The Post has learned.
Luciano Todman — a 28-year-old with no underlying symptoms — died early on March 29 in his Bronx apartment after days of diarrhea, vomiting, difficulty breathing, his mother told first responders, according to police sources.
In Flushing, 80-year-old Ho Louie was sent home from the hospital, where his doctor said it would be safer, after four days fighting coronavirus-like symptoms. He died on April 1 just before 11 a.m., sources said.
Another Queens man was found unresponsive in his apartment on April 3, according to sources. The 50-year-old Thokmey Thokmey had tried a few days earlier to get tested but was turned away at the hospital after it ran out of tests.
Todman, Thokmey and Louie are among the 80 death investigations involving people who showed signs of the pandemic COVID-19 between March 22 and Tuesday, according to more than 100 cases reviewed by The Post.
None of those cases, though, were included in the total count of New Yorkers claimed by coronavirus because they weren’t tested before dying.
And those are number only come from calls cops responded to.
At the same time, city paramedics were answering hundreds of more calls for cardiac arrest that include COVID-19 symptoms — with the death count worse than “wartime.”
“Out of the 12 [cardiac cases], I did on Sunday 10 had COVID symptoms. Flu-like symptoms, cough, etc. Nobody made it back. That’s going on all over the city,” said Anthony Almojera, vice president of FDNY, EMS union local 3621.
“There’s gotta be 200 a day… obviously are not all COVID, but they aren’t being tested,” he said.
The FDNY confirmed that paramedics are seeing more than 300 calls for cardiac arrest with “well over” 200 people dying each day. Typically paramedics would deal with around two dozen deaths on around 54 to 74 cardiac arrest calls.
On Sunday alone, EMS responded to 322 calls — but only 81 survived.
A total 2,192 people died during similar calls between March 20 and April 5 — compared to 453 during the same time last year.
“Obviously we deal with death but not on this level,” Almojera said. “It’s crazy.”
New York City’s death toll — which surged past 3,000 on Tuesday — only includes the number of confirmed cases. The city does not test people for the disease after they’ve died — even if they end up in the Medical Examiner’s Office after fighting coronavirus-like symptoms.
The OCME has reported these deaths to the Health Department as “probable” but it was unknown how many of these cases were, and the city wouldn’t say whether bodies were being tested when The Post asked two weeks ago. The OCME confirmed to WNYC that bodies were not being tested.
In at least two cases the police responded to, a medical examiner released the bodies directly to the funeral home, cop sources said.
Almojera said EMS has had a number of similar cases where the bodies skipped the city morgue.
A spokeswoman for the OCME did not respond for comment.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged the city’s under-counting of coronavirus deaths Tuesday morning — as the city’s Department of Health reported that 3,202 people had died due to the pandemic.
“It’s again why I’m trying to be very careful even when I say we see some good news that we don’t overrate the good news,” de Blasio said about the under-counting.
Hizzoner, though, discounted the potential discrepancy, saying “the first thing we’re focused on is saving the next life.”
But experts say without looking at the totality of cases, it could severely affect the next person to contract the virus.
“If deaths aren’t a reliable marker, then we are in really big trouble,” said Susan Hassig, an associate professor of epidemiology at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Typically, predicting the apex or plateau of the virus’s infection curve is based largely on the death rate, Hassig said. That modeling determines how hospitals and state and city officials will shift their response during the outbreak.
“The fact that it is an underestimate … the extent to which the models are being used in New York, it could be substantial,” Hassig said. “If it’s 100 cases, that’s a big number.”
“If it progressing and gets even worse … it’s problematic.”
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office said Tuesday the OCME and Health Department were “working together to include into their reports deaths that may be linked to COVID but not lab-confirmed that occur at home.”
Additional reporting by Julia Marsh