NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 16,000 COVID-19 nursing home deaths in the United States were unreported during the early months of the pandemic, a report led by Harvard researcher Karen Shen has shown.

The Life Care Center nursing home where some patients have died from COVID-19 is pictured in Kirkland, Washington on March 5, 2020.

By studying data across 20 states, the study found that 44 percent of all COVID-19 cases and 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes counted by states health departments were unaccounted for in the federal data.

"This may demonstrate a widespread inability of nursing homes to reliably collect data early in the pandemic or that pressures to report fewer cases and deaths were common to all facilities," the researchers wrote.