EXCLUSIVE – Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has no regrets about his administration’s policies requiring nursing homes to admit COVID-19-positive patients in the early months of the pandemic, according to concerned Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N. Y. ). in the former governor’s question on Tuesday.
Cuomo, who resigned in late 2021 after months of scandal, testified under subpoena before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in a closed-door transcribed interview consultation related to the New York City Department of Health’s March 25, 2020, directive banning nursing homes. of denying admission to COVID-19 positive patients.
Malliotakis, the New York delegate on the subcommittee, told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that Cuomo blamed the creation of this policy on an “unknown member of the Department of Health. “
“It’s frustrating that after almost four years of searching for answers about what exactly happened here, what led to the executive order, he’s looking to shift the blame to an unknown member of the Ministry of Health,” Malliotakis said.
According to Malliotakis, Cuomo also claimed that he didn’t know anything about the executive order until a month after it was issued, when his workplace began receiving inquiries from the media.
Malliotakis said it was very difficult given that Cuomo held daily briefings on the latest pandemic news at the Empire State Building from March 2 to June 19, 2020.
“Didn’t the governor know what was going on in his own state?Malliotakis asked. Everybody knew, every local legislator, every state legislator. Retirement homes complained about this in our offices.
Malliotakis, who served in the New York State Assembly until January 2021, said she and her colleagues reported the issue to the Executive House after being contacted through many constituents.
The New York representative also said Cuomo blamed the Trump administration’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for issuing recommendations that nursing homes continue to care for COVID-19 patients.
Local news outlet WRGB-Albany won one of Cuomo’s opening remarks for the closed-door interview.
“It was black and white in CDC and CMS guidelines,” reads the opening prepared by Cuomo. “The medical theory was that patients discharged from hospitals were not contagious and that discharges were conditional on the implementation of transmission-based precautions in nursing homes. “.
Malliotakis told the Washington Examiner that the CMS and CDC recommendations and guidelines were different in nature from the mandate’s policy.
Cuomo also said in his opening that several other states, with both Democratic and Republican administrations, have implemented similar policies on nursing homes, but only Democratic states have been investigated through the Trump administration’s Department of Justice for their policies.
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Evidence from Cuomo’s impeachment inquiry, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the number of nursing home deaths due to the policy may have been as high as 9,844 and that the Health Department particularly underestimated the deaths. Cuomo, in his opening statement, cited asymptomatic-positive nursing home staff as the cause of the highest number of deaths.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi for comment.