Cuomo Agency Reports Gov. Cuomo’s Policy Didn’t Cause NY Nursing Home COVID Deaths–Blames Healthcare Workers
What happened to celebrating the “brave” front-line healthcare workers that were putting their lives on the line?
Apparently they can be tossed under the bus now that Governor Andrew Cuomo(D-NY) is in the crosshairs for his disastrous policy that caused unnecessary deaths.
Governor Cuomo’s internal investigation into what caused the deaths in nursing homes has found that his March edict to force nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients was not the cause of the 6,300 deaths in nursing homes, instead, it was 20,000 COVID-positive employees that were still working in those homes.
New York hospitals released more than 6,300 recovering coronavirus patients into nursing homes during the height of the pandemic under a controversial, now-scrapped policy, state officials said Monday, but they argued it was not to blame for one of the nation’s highest nursing home death tolls.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, which has taken intense criticism over the policy, instead contended the virus’ rampant spread through the state’s nursing homes was propelled by more than 20,000 infected home staffers, many of whom kept going to work unaware they had the virus in March and April. Another 17,500 workers were infected through early June.
“Facts matter. And those are the facts,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a news conference.
The New York Times reports that 43% of COVID deaths in the United States were connected to nursing homes. The article states that 54,000 residents and staff of nursing homes, assisted living, and long-term care facilities have died from the coronavirus.
The Cuomo administration is now saying that asymptomatic healthcare workers are to blame and not the thousands of COVID-positive patients that were forced back into those nursing homes by the Governor’s March 25 order.
There’s still confusion about whether or not asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 are spreading the virus or not. In June, a WHO official said that asymptomatic spread is “rare” but that was quickly backtracked. So, do they or don’t they? Who can possibly know at this point?
What we do know as a fact is that thousands of COVID-positive patients were sent to nursing homes while the emergency hospitals were largely empty.
ClashDaily has covered Governor Cuomo’s failures during the pandemic extensively.
Here’s a selection:
- Gov. Andrew Cuomo Sent COVID Patients To Retirement Homes–With A Supply Of Body Bags
- PROJECT VERITAS: Here’s Why NY Funeral Homes Are Calling BS On COVID Stats (Video)
- NYC’s COVID Death Rate In Nursing Homes Is Due To Governor Cuomo’s Disastrous Policies
- Cuomo’s Officials Caught Cooking The Books On Nursing Home Deaths
- SHOCKING: Cuomo’s Policy Sent More Than 4,300 COVID-Positive Patients Into Nursing Homes
- Memory Hole: Cuomo’s Order Forcing COVID Patients On Nursing Homes Scrubbed From Gov’t Website
- MEDIA BIAS: New York’s Cuomo Has Been Lauded While Florida’s DeSantis Has Been Vilified
Fox News’s Janice Dean has been a vocal critic of Governor Cuomo’s handling of the situation. Her husband lost both parents to COVID in two different nursing home/assisted living facilities.
Fox News Persona’s Tragic Story Puts A Human Face On Cuomo’s Disastrous Decisions
Serious questions.
1)How can @NYGovCuomo investigate himself
2) How can @NYGovCuomo declare he’s innocent in the investigation that he investigated?! https://t.co/SsqwcScEVw— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) July 6, 2020
Sending even one COVID-positive patient into a nursing care facility was deadly.
The state’s findings didn’t deter Republicans from seeking investigations of the state’s nursing home deaths. And some nursing home groups remain convinced the March 25 order was a bad idea.
“Bringing in even one instance of COVID to a nursing home is in no one’s best interest,” said Stephen Hanse, who runs a nursing home association called the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living.
Source: Associated Press
The first big outbreak of COVID-19 was in a Washington state nursing home and that was a warning to everyone. The Cuomo administration can claim that there were things that we didn’t know, but that is not one of them. We knew from the Wuhan outbreak that the elderly were the most vulnerable.
ClashDaily reported back in May that the New York Department of Health permitted asymptomatic COVID-positive employees to work in at least one nursing home for veterans in upstate New York. Was this a state-wide practice? We’ll likely never know that.
But as long as Cuomo can keep his positive image, that’s all that matters, right?
