A coronavirus is isolated inside an hourglass as sand counts down.

As the coronavirus pandemic raged in New York earlier this year, state lawmakers quietly passed an immunity clause protecting hospitals and nursing homes from potential litigation.

In the months before and after the move, health care interests funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to political committees and state campaigns, according to filings released this week.

The immunity law, buried in a state budget bill and passed without fanfare this spring, gave hospitals and nursing homes cover from possible lawsuits tied to the coronavirus crisis.

The immunity provision does not cover gross negligence or reckless misconduct, but the law specifies that those definitions do not apply to "decisions resulting from a resource or staffing shortage."

The Greater New York Hospital Association, a health care trade association that represents hospitals and health systems, pumped at least $365,000 in donations to political campaign committees from mid-January to mid-July, according to state filings released this week. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of the coronavirus crisis in nursing homes is the subject of deep scrutiny as those facilities have recorded thousands of deaths. There have been at least 6,300 confirmed or presumed coronavirus deaths at nursing homes across New York, data shows. 

Officials say nursing homes, which have been thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic in the United States, can act as a breeding ground for the coronavirus.

The crisis has also drawn national attention to long-running issues in the nursing home industry, such as low staffing that health experts say can accelerate the spread of an infectious disease.

In New York, the immunity law says its purpose is to promote public health by "broadly protecting the health care facilities and health care professionals in this state from liability that may result from treatment of individuals with COVID-19 under conditions resulting from circumstances associated with the public health emergency."

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, described being blindsided by the immunity legislation. The whole issue sprang out of nowhere, a little more than hours before the bills were printed and voted on, he said on Thursday.

By the time he and others knew the topic was on the table, it was already a done deal, as he described it.

"That kind of locking down of an issue doesn't happen without extraordinary political influence," he said. "And you had that from all the trade associations involved combined with the governor [pulling] this issue out of a hat and ramming it through with everything he had."

The Manhattan Democrat described hospitals as among the most powerful lobbying forces in Albany. 

Assemblyman Ron Kim, D-Queens, said there's an environment where officials put the interests of corporations over people who are suffering and in the most pain. He is sponsoring a bill to repeal the immunity law.

The Greater New York Hospital Association says hospitals were the focus of the association's lobbying efforts for coronavirus-related legal immunity. The organization said the law went further and included nursing homes, something they said the association did not play a role in.

"The immunity protections recognize the real-time decisions hospitals and their workers made during an extraordinarily challenging pandemic," said Brian Conway, a spokesman for the association, in a statement. 

Conway argued that, while there are exceptions, "hospitals and their workers should not be second-guessed for trying to save as many lives as possible under the equivalent of wartime conditions."

Other health care interests that dished out donations this year include the Healthcare Association of New York State, which made at least $100,000 in political donations from mid-January to mid-July, state campaign filings show. The association's website says it provides "leadership, representation and service to not-for-profit and public hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare organizations" throughout the state.

The Medical Society of The State of New York poured at least $32,000 to political committees and individual campaigns during the same time period.

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