ALBANY, NY (AP) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has written a book on managing the COVID-19 crisis. Now he faces growing accusations that he has disguised the true death toll from the pandemic on residents of nursing homes, attacks that challenge his reputation for right-wing shooting ability and could cloud his political future.
State lawmakers have launched an inquiry into depriving Cuomo of his emergency powers and even depriving him of his resignation after new information emerged this week about why certain nursing home data was kept under surveillance for months, despite requests from lawmakers and others.
Melissa DeRosa, top assistant, told lawmakers the data was delayed because officials were concerned that the information will be “used against us” by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.
The new salvos of Republicans and Cuomo’s fellow Democrats are a strong turnaround from the early days of the pandemic, when Cuomo’s daily briefings helped build a national reputation for leadership. The briefings in which he vowed to deliver ‘just the facts’ earned him an international Emmy and led to his book “American Crisis”.
He stepped into it more than a little bit. “It would be bad enough if it came out and he was not publicly celebrated for his handling of the pandemic,” said Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College. ‘But if we put it aside, it does not get more serious. You’re talking about the deaths of 15,000 people. ”
The Cuomo government has reported dramatic declines in COVID-19 deaths for months among long-term caregivers. That is now almost 15,000, compared to the 8,500 previously announced.
The new toll amounts to about one-seventh of the approximately 90,000 people living in nursing homes in New York from 2019, which is one of the most populous in the country.
Cuomo pointed to a small but growing body of research suggesting that an uncontrolled spread of the community is the biggest factor in the outbreak of nursing homes, and he said inadequate federal government assistance with travel restrictions, testing and protective equipment New Left York and its suburbs particularly vulnerable.
He dismissed criticism as political, noting that the thousands of residents of nursing homes in hospitals were always counted in the state’s total score.
“He died in a hospital, died in a nursing home – they died,” he said.
The uproar may not have the same impact on the Democrat in the third term as when he would be re-elected for the first time this year, Zaino said. But that may make him less likely to be nominated for a post in the Biden government.
And Cuomo – who says he will perform again in 2022 – is now facing criticism from members of his own party.
“The governor’s lack of transparency and stonewalling regarding his actions in the nursing home of his administration is unacceptable,” said State Senator John Mannion, one of the 14 Democratic state senators, who should recall Cuomo’s expanded emergency forces as soon as possible.
The higher death toll was only announced hours after a report by Democratic Attorney General Letitia James late last month on the administration’s failure to include nursing home residents who died in hospitals. The updated numbers supported the findings from an Associated Press investigation last year that concluded that the state could already underestimate the deaths of thousands.
Nurses and family members’ nurses have questioned whether the spread of the virus in nursing homes is fueled by a March 25 order banning facilities from refusing people just because they had COVID-19. The directive was intended to free up space in rapidly filling hospitals.
Debra Diehl, 62, who lost her 85-year-old father, Reeves Hupman, to the suspected COVID-19 in a nursing home outside Albany in May, wants to know why Cuomo and the state no longer did anything to separate residents. had the virus, perhaps by placing it in field hospitals.
“They turned up people who were sent from hospitals hereafter,” Diehl said. ‘It looked just like Typhoid Marys, and it just spread further. He did not know what he was doing, or he did not care. ”
In response to a request for freedom of information from the AP in May, the state health department released records this week showed that more than 9,000 patients with a recovering coronavirus were released from hospitals in nursing homes in New York from March 25 to May 10, when Cuomo overturned the directive.
The state has issued a report insisting that the patients do not drive the transmission of the virus in nursing homes, although this does not rule out whether the directive plays any role..
Cuomo said the facilities have a responsibility to accept only patients they can care for. Amid the pandemic, state health inspectors discovered violations of infection control at dozens of nursing homes and fined at least $ 1 million.
Still, DeRosa estimates that residents of nursing homes in New York represent 40% of the lives lost this winter. New York has reported more than 10,000 deaths since Dec. 1.
The announcement of DeRosa’s comments this week in a conference with Democratic lawmakers has brought months of complaints to a boiling point.
She said the state “froze” in response to August legislators for the number of nursing home residents who died in hospitals because officials also responded to an investigation by the Justice Department and frustrated that “what we are starting says, will be used against us, and we were not sure whether an investigation would be instituted. “
DeRosa issued a statement Friday, saying the state is slow to respond to lawmakers because it has to do with the Department of Justice, and then with the revival of the virus in the fall and with vaccinations. The governor’s office declined to comment further.
“It gave the impression that they were trying to whitewash the information,” Senator Rachel May, one of the 14 Democrats, asked to recall Cuomo’s emergency force.
Senate Republican leader Rob Ortt said Cuomo “should demand the immediate resignation of anyone involved in this cover-up, and if he is aware of it, he should be removed from office.”
The criticism may resonate because it is consistent with a general complaint that Cuomo’s controlling nature may be undermining its effectiveness.
Cuomo rejected the idea and wrote in his book, “You’re showing me a person who’s not in control, and I’ll show you a person who’s probably not very successful.”
For Fordham University political scientist Christina Greer, the recent revelations ‘are being questioned: can we trust news coming from the governors’ office? Not just from nursing homes, but can we trust it over schools, can we trust it over prisons, can we trust it over other communities?
“It definitely casts a bad shadow on the government,” she said.
___
Peltz reports from New York.