A new bombshell report shows New York Governor Andrew Cuomo sent over 9,000 COVID patients to nursing homes, which ultimately resulted in killing well over 15,000 seniors.
The numbers are shocking to New York residents who lost family members in nursing homes due to Cuomo’s order putting coronavirus patients in them because they were initially told just over 6,000 COVID patients were placed in the facilities.
But now the numbers are skyrocketing in terms of infected patients Cuomo put in nursing homes but also the total number of seniors who died. The new figures come as the Cuomo administration has been forced to acknowledge it was underreporting the overall number of COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents.
Updated figures now reveal over 15,000 nursing home patients were killed thanks to Cuomo’s order, which is a much higher figure than either Cuomo or New York officials have been reporting for almost a year
The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40 percent higher than what the state health department previously released. And it raises new questions as to whether a March 25 directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration helped spread sickness and death among residents, a charge the state disputes.
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“The lack of transparency and the meting out of bits of important data has undermined our ability to both recognize the scope and severity of what’s going on” and address it, said Richard Mollot, the executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a residents advocacy group.
The new figures come as the Cuomo administration has been forced in recent weeks to acknowledge it has been underreporting the overall number of COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents. It is now nearly 15,000 up from the 8,500 previously disclosed.
The Cuomo administration’s March 25 directive barred nursing homes from refusing people just because they had COVID-19. It was intended to free up space in hospitals swamped in the early days of the pandemic. It came under criticism from advocates for nursing home residents and their relatives, who said it had the potential to spread the virus in a state that at the time already had the nation’s highest nursing home death toll.
In the aftermath of that report coming out, many Republican officials around the state have called for further investigation, and even for Gov. Cuomo to resign or be removed from office. Multiple non-GOP officials also called out the governor for the report, including NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and a growing list of state representatives and senators.
“To continual defenders of @NYGovCuomo how is this ok? How is it not #Trump like?” Williams posted on Twitter. “And when FORCED into admission, the most you get is a sorry we got caught…and not even directly from him or to the families All while asking NYers to trust your decisions.”
“There has never been any question in my mind that sending COVID-19 patients into completely unprepared, understaffed and underresourced nursing homes both increased transmission and led to a greater number of deaths,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.
Cuomo also came under fire at the time because President Donald Trump had provided a hospital ship meant to take on COVID patients so they would not be placed elsewhere and to help lessen the burden on hospitals. Cuomo never used it.
In addition to the new findings regarding nursing home numbers, a report by the New York Post alleges that Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa apologized for withholding the state’s nursing home death toll during a conference call with state Democratic leaders. The Post article says DeRosa held the true numbers out of fear they would be used by federal prosecutors against the state.
