Cuomo’s COVID Death Toll Rises

New state Health Department figures on COVID deaths show that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s leadership was even deadlier than New Yorkers knew.

The new stats put the pandemic’s firstyear toll at 36,337 — up 21% from what the state had admitted.

The Cuomoites only counted deaths in hospitals, care homes and similar facilities, and that practice continued even after he was hounded from office — until now.

At last, the numbers include death-certificate info to count deaths at home, as the federal Centers for Disease Control and the city Health Department did all along. This increases the 2020 downstate total by 6,283 lost lives.

This more-honest count shows that COVID was the city’s leading cause of death in 2020 and the No. 2 cause statewide.

Why hide the truth? Because it undercut Cuomo’s image as the heroic man-in-charge, a narrative that helped him score a $5.1 million advance for his book “American Crisis” (largely written by staff “volunteering” their time as COVID still raged).

In the wake of his orders forcing care homes to admit contagious patients, Cuomo & Co. also undercounted deaths in those homes, eventually pleading to state legislators that they feared a federal probe by the Trump Justice Department.

Cuomo is now pulling out all the stops in a bid to regain public support. This info should remind the people of New York that he doesn’t deserve it.

Worse is to come when (if?) the Hochul administration finally makes public its longdelayed assessment of the Cuomo-era response to COVID.