CUOMO DENIES COVER-UP
But governor accepts responsibility for nursing home info being withheld
Under fire over his management of the coronavirus’s lethal path through New York’s nursing homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that the state didn’t cover up deaths but should have moved faster to release some information sought by lawmakers, the public and the press.
“All the deaths in the nursing homes and hospitals were always fully, publicly and accurately reported,” the Democratic governor said during an online press briefing, weeks after the state was forced to acknowledge its count of nursing home deaths excluded thousands of residents who passed away after being taken to hospitals.
Cuomo on Monday described the matter as a difference of “categorization,” with the state counting the deaths based on where they occurred and others seeking total deaths of nursing home residents, regardless of the location.
“We should have done a better job of providing as much in
formation as we could as quickly as we could,” he said. “No excuses. I accept responsibility for that.”
Cuomo, who has seen his image as a pandemic-taming leader dented by a series of disclosures involving nursing homes in recent weeks, said he would propose reforms involving nursing homes and hospitals in the upcoming state budget, without giving details.
But he continued to blame a “toxic political environment” and “disinformation”
for much of the complaints surrounding his administration’s handling of the issue.
State lawmakers have been calling for investigations, stripping Cuomo of his emergency powers and even his resignation after new details emerged last week about why certain nursing home data wasn’t disclosed for months, despite requests from lawmakers and others.
First, a report last month by Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James reported the Cuomo administration’s failure to tally nursing home residents’ deaths at hospitals. The state then acknowledged the total number of long-term care residents’ deaths was nearly 15,000, up from the 8,500 previously disclosed.
Next, in reply to a Freedom of Information request from The Associated Press, the state Health Department released records showing more than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients in New York were released from hospitals into nursing homes in the pandemic’s early months — over 40% higher than the state had said previously, because it wasn’t counting residents who returned from hospitals to homes where they already had lived.
Cuomo and his administration have maintained the hospital patients didn’t drive nursing home outbreaks, saying the patients likely weren’t contagious anymore and that virtually all the homes that admitted them had cases already. Still, the governor stopped allowing such admissions last May.
Then late last week, it emerged that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa had told Democratic state lawmakers that the tally of nursing home residents’ deaths at hospitals — data that legislators had sought since August — was delayed because officials worried that the information was “going to be used against us” by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.
Echoing an explanation DeRosa gave Friday, Cuomo said Monday that the state was slow to respond to the lawmakers because officials prioritized dealing with requests from the Justice Department and were busy dealing with the work of the pandemic.
“When we didn’t provide information, it allowed press, people, cynics, politicians, to fill the void,” he said, and “it created confusion and cynicism and pain for the families. The truth is, everybody did everything they could.”
Dutchess County Executive
Marc Molinaro, Cuomo’s Republican opponent in the 2018 election, accused the governor on Monday of “a void of leadership, a void of honesty, a void of compassion [and] decency, and a complete and utter void of respect for the people of New York.”
“His rambling, lying, incoherent finger-pointing press conference was just the latest chapter in his failed administration,” said Molinaro, who’s been mentioned as a possible challenger to Cuomo in 2022. “New Yorkers and the thousands of families who lost loved ones deserve, and demand, an independent investigation.”