Cuomo regrets New York nursing home death data ‘void’
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TIMESLEDGER | QNS.20 COM | FEB. 19-FEB. 25, 2021
said. “The last thing that
we wanted to do, the last
thing that I wanted to do,
was to aggravate a terrible
situation.”
Praised at the start of
the COVID-19 crisis last
spring for the state’s response
to it, Cuomo had
been dogged for months
with questions about
virus-related deaths in
nursing homes. Much of
that scrutiny came in response
to the state Health
Department’s March
memo on the readmission
of nursing home patients
who had been hospitalized
with COVID-19 back
into nursing homes.
That policy, Cuomo
said, followed the advice
provided at that time the
federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
and the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid
Services.
“Residents leaving the
hospitals were not likely
to be contagious because,
at that time, the viral load
is so low that it’s not contagious,”
the governor explained.
Moreover, Cuomo said,
the nursing homes had to
agree to take the patients
back on — and most of the
facilities, at that point,
were already dealing with
many COVID-19 cases.
Meanwhile, hospitals
were quickly filling up
with COVID-19 patients
and needed the additional
beds to meet the demand.
The death rate in the
nursing homes, the governor
claimed, was not directly
impacted as a result
of the policy.
“COVID did not get
into the nursing homes
by people coming from
hospitals. COVID got
into the nursing homes
by staff walking into the
nursing homes when we
didn’t even know they
had COVID,” he said. Asymptomatic
visitors also
unknowingly brought the
virus in with them and
added to the infection before
medical experts realized
how easily COVID-19
could spread, he added.
Yet the nursing home
readmission policy served
as fodder for political attacks
and conspiracy theories
primarily from Cuomo’s
political opponents.
Then in August 2020, the
federal Justice Department
and the state Legislature
made requests to the
Cuomo administration for
full data on nursing home
COVID-19 deaths.
Cuomo said his administration
gave the federal
request precedence
in August and complied
with it in full. The administration
“paused the state
Legislature’s request,” he
said, to focus on satisfying
the federal request. On
Friday, DeRosa had said
the state Legislature’s request
went unfulfilled due
to the second COVID-19
wave that hit last fall.
But Cuomo admitted
that his administration
did not do enough to fully
inform the public, including
the press, about the
nursing home COVID-19
deaths — or to combat disinformation
and political
attacks connected to it.
“The void in information
that we created started
misinformation, disinformation,
conspiracy
theories and now people
have to hear that, and they
don’t know what is the
truth,” Cuomo said. “The
truth is you had the best
medical professionals and
advice on the globe. The
truth is it was in the middle
of a terrible pandemic.
The truth is COVID attacks
senior citizens. The
truth is, with all we know,
people still die in nursing
homes.”
Yet Cuomo — when
asked, as a former state
attorney general, if he
would have considered
opening an investigation
into the fiasco under another
administration —
suggested that he didn’t
believe “there’s anything
to clear here.”
“It is a fact that the
state legislature did a request.
We told them we
weren’t going to address
the request at that time,
we’d honor the DOJ request
first. There’s nothing
to investigate there,”
he said.
The administration’s
failing, he suggested, was
public communication,
not public law.
“We should have spent
more time focusing on the
info request from press,
from others, because
what happened, as a result
was that it created a void.
And when you create a
void in this world at this
time, something is going
to fill that void,” he added.
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
Governor Andrew Cuomo
admitted Monday that
mistakes were made in
the state’s disclosure of
data regarding COVID-19
deaths in New York state’s
nursing homes, but shook
off allegations of wrongdoing.
During an afternoon
press conference, Cuomo
offered a thorough defense
of his administration
in the wake of another
tabloid’s bombshell report
that Melissa DeRosa,
secretary to the governor,
apologized to state lawmakers
for withholding
from them the COVID-19
death data while they responded
to requests last
year from the federal Department
of Justice.
Cuomo said he would
“take responsibility for
creating the void that allowed
for” the spread of
disinformation and politically
driven conspiracy
theories about his administration’s
handling
of COVID-19 in nursing
homes serving the senior
population most vulnerable
to COVID-19.
The governor stopped
short of making a full apology,
or of embracing calls
for further investigation
that have surfaced since
the bombshell report —
as well as the findings of
state Attorney General Letitia
James’ probe which
found that the state Health
Department underreported
nursing home COVID-
19 deaths.
He insisted that the
administration acted on
the level, but had suffered
a months-long breakdown
in communication that
led to public scrutiny over
its response to COVID-19
in nursing homes.
“The void we created
allowed for disinformation,
and that created more
anxieties for the families
of loved ones,” Cuomo
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