After issuing a directive to put COVID-19 patients in nursing homes, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office acted repeatedly to downplay the tragic aftermath of their decision that led to more than 12,000 resident deaths.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released a staff memo Monday that details how Cuomo's office made a deliberate decision to exclude scientifically significant nursing home-related COVID-19 deaths from mortality rates and heavily edited official New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) documents to shift blame away from Cuomo and his team.
The release of the memo came in advance of a public hearing Tuesday featuring Cuomo.
The memo stated that according to witness testimony and public reporting since the start of the pandemic, "Cuomo's characterization of the series of events is demonstrably false."
"The Cuomo administration — through the NYSDOH — began collecting data related to nursing home fatalities beginning in March 2020," the memo stated. "Contrary to Mr. Cuomo's testimony, his administration changed the methodology in which nursing home fatalities were accounted for and publicly reported. His administration initially categorized out-of-facility deaths as nursing home fatalities but stopped reporting those numbers as nursing home fatalities on May 3, 2020."
The directive issued March 25, 2020, in the early weeks of the pandemic, "recklessly directed New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit COVID-positive and potentially COVID-positive patients," the subcommittee wrote in a news release. "This authoritative 'Directive' notably omitted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention infection control guidance and did not consider whether a facility had the capacity to house COVID-positive patients.
"As a result, New York's most vulnerable population was tragically exposed to COVID-19 unnecessarily. Today's memo includes the findings of the Select Subcommittee's thorough investigation into the development, issuance, and resulting cover-up of the March 25 directive — including 10 transcribed interviews and the review of nearly 550,000 pages of documents."
The memo stated that Dr. Howard Zucker, former commissioner of the NYSDOH, testified the March 25 directive was prompted by a direct request to Cuomo from the Greater New York Hospital Association. A former NYSDOH employee also testified the directive "absolutely" received approval from Cuomo's team before it became public.
Criticism about the March 25 directive led to a NYSDOH report issued July 6, 2020, that alleged nursing home staff — and not the directive — was the source of transmission that resulted in deaths of nursing home residents. The memo stated Cuomo administration officials believed Cuomo directed the issuance of the July 6 report and that he reviewed and edited the report to make the findings more causal.
Cuomo testified in front of the subcommittee on June 11 that he did not have any involvement with the drafting of the report and that he did not recall reviewing or editing it.
"The Cuomo Administration is responsible for recklessly exposing New York's most vulnerable population to COVID-19," Wenstrup said in the news release. "Today's memo holds Mr. Cuomo and his team accountable for their failures and provides the most detailed and comprehensive accounting of New York's pandemic-era wrongdoing."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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