New York Governor Kathy Hochul promised more government transparency on her first day in office and by day’s end, her administration had quietly delivered it by acknowledging nearly 12,000 more deaths in the state from Covid-19 than had been publicised by her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, AP reported.

New York now reports nearly 55,400 people have died of Covid-19 in New York based on death certificate data submitted to the CDC, up from about 43,400 that governor Cuomo had reported to the public as of Monday, his last day in office.

“We’re now releasing more data than had been released before publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what’s being displayed by the CDC,” Hochul said on MSNBC. “There’s a lot of things that weren’t happening and I’m going to make them happen. Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration.”