28 THE QUEENS COURIER • HEALTH • FEBRUARY 18, 2021 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
health
Cuomo regrets New York nursing home death data ‘void’
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
Governor Andrew Cuomo admitted
VillageCare receives fi rst round of COVID-19 vaccine
BY QNS STAFF
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
VillageCare at 46 & Ten received their
fi rst round of COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was
administered to 65 assisted living residents,
including 99-year-old Sophie
Gerber. As well 40 staff members.
Sophie Gerber, a resident at VillageCare
at 46 & Ten who will turn 100 years of
age in April, survived and fully recovered
from COVID-19 in early 2020 was ecstatic
to be the fi rst individual to receive the
vaccine in the facility.
“I am so grateful to receive this vaccine,”
said Ms. Gerber. “My message to everyone
is to get the vaccine when it is available to
you and be courteous to all around you
and wear a mask.”
Th e senior community has been one
of the most vulnerable to the nationwide
spread of COVID-19. Nursing home and
assisted living facility seniors experienced
the greatest impact and loss during this
global pandemic, which made them eligible
for fi rst rounds of the vaccine. While
the vaccine has been carefully evaluated
for safety and effi ciency by the Federal government,
the practice of wearing a mask,
maintaining social distance, and frequent
handwashing remain an active defense to
reduce the spread of COVID-19.
“We are eager to have all employees and
residents vaccinated as quickly and safely
possible as we are hopeful this vaccine
will save lives and begin our path to
normalcy,” said Sandy Freeland, Senior
Vice President, Program Operations. “Th e
COVID-19 virus has been devastating
and it is important for us to do our part to
keep our community safe, while protecting
ourselves.”
Th e fi rst phase of the statewide vaccination
plan provides a sense of relief for
frontline and essential workers that have
placed their health and lives at risk to care
for their patients and residents.
For more information on the
VillageCare at 46 & Ten, visit https://www.
villagecare.org/4610.
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 aft ernoon press conference,
Cuomo off ered 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.
Even so, the governor stopped short
of making a full apology, or of embracing
calls for further investigation that
have surfaced since last week’s bombshell
report — as well as the fi ndings
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 suff ered a
months-long breakdown in communication
that led to public
scrutiny over its response to
COVID-19 in nursing homes.
“Th e void we created allowed
for disinformation, and that
created more anxieties for the families of
loved ones,” Cuomo said. “Th e 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.
Th at 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 fi lling up with
COVID-19 patients and needed the
additional beds to meet the demand.
Th e 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.
Th en 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. Th e 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 unfulfi
lled 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.
“Th e 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.
“Th e truth is you had the best medical
professionals and advice on the globe.
Th e truth is it was in the middle of a
terrible pandemic. Th e truth is COVID
attacks senior citizens. Th e 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 fi asco 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 fi rst. Th ere’s
nothing to investigate there,” he said.
Th e 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 fi ll that
void,” he added.
Photo courtesy of VillageCare
Sophie Gerber receives the COVID-19 vaccine.
Photo by Mark Hallum
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