GOV’S ABOUT FACE
Cuomo finally flips on nursing-home scandal
Gov. Cuomo yesterday reversed his policy of making nursing homes accept COVID-19 patients, leaving residents like sitting ducks. “We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” he said. “Period.”
Gov. Cuomo pulled a 180 on Sunday, mandating that hospital patients now be coronavirus-free before they are discharged to nursing homes — as he continued to defend state policies despite more than 5,200 likely deaths from the disease in nursing homes.
“We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” Cuomo said during an Albany press briefing. “Period.”
The directive curbs — partially — a March 25 mandate barring nursing homes from denying admission or readmission on the basis of a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection.
That policy has drawn fierce, bipartisan blowback for forcing coronavirus carriers into nursing homes, even as Cuomo repeatedly acknowledged — right up to Sunday — that seniors are among those most susceptible to severe illness from the contagion.
“This virus uses nursing homes,” Cuomo said on Sunday. “They are ground zero. It’s a congregation of vulnerable people.”
That recipe for disaster has already borne itself out in 5,244 confirmed or suspected coronavirus fatalities in nursing homes — 5 percent of the state’s total nursing-home population of 101,518.
As of midnight Sunday, 2,598 COVID-19 deaths had been confirmed in nursing-home facilities statewide, as well as 2,646 presumed cases, in which the deceased weren’t officially tested but displayed symptoms, Department of Health statistics show.
But Cuomo on Sunday not only disputed that the change was a concession, he also denied that the March directive was flawed, and instead held up New York’s handling of nursing homes as a national success story.
“Whatever we’re doing has worked, on the facts,” Cuomo said, arguing that confirmed nursing-home deaths account for only 12 percent of the state’s total coronavirus fatalities — a figure that does not include thousands of presumed cases.
Meanwhile, nursing-home residents overall represent less than 1 percent of the state’s total population.
Cuomo’s figures also do not include nursing-home residents who died of the virus in hospitals.
Sunday’s directive applies only to hospitals, Cuomo said.
“This is binding on a hospital, not on a nursing home,” he said. “This will reduce the burden on nursing homes all across the board, because they’re not gonna get any COVID people from a hospital.”
Nursing homes are still forbidden under the March directive from turning away coronavirus positive applicants from other avenues — even though Cuomo has said he would advise others against putting their loved ones in homes during the pandemic.
Cuomo has argued that the policy was put in place to prevent discrimination, and that nursing homes always had both the right and duty to refer COVID-positive patients elsewhere if they couldn’t care for them.
Those facilities that fail to do so face revocation of their license, the governor said on Sunday.
While Cuomo announced last month that state Attorney General Letitia James was probing the scandal — for wrongdoing by nursing homes, not the state — New York lawmakers have called for an independent investigation.
Cuomo also mandated on Sunday that all nursing-home workers must be tested twice weekly for the virus.
“That’s not just a temperature check, that is a diagnostic test. We have the tests available,” he said.
“The most vulnerable population deserves the highest level of care.”
Many nursinghome workers have
voiced concerns about a lack of supplies, only for Cuomo to say it was “not our job” to outfit them.
Cuomo rolled out the piecemeal protections for nursing-home residents as the state’s coronavirus numbers continued along their slow downward trajectory.
The number of hospitalizations sat at 7,262 through Saturday, a decline of more than 500 from the day prior, according to state Department of Health statistics.
Some 2,273 new cases were documented on Saturday, raising the total number of confirmed infections to 335,395.
Another 207 confirmed deaths were reported statewide in the 24-hour period ending at midnight Sunday, running the total to 21,478, according to Cuomo.
That grim tally includes only confirmed coronavirus deaths and not the more than 2,600 presumed virus fatalities in nursing homes.
The 207 daily death total equals that reported on March 27, reaching a low untouched in more than a month.
“Still terribly high,” Cuomo said. “But better.”