A House panel overseeing COVID matters released a report Monday that found former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) personally tweaked report language about his controversial policy directing nursing homes to admit coronavirus-infected patients.
Cuomo is expected to defend his administration’s actions Tuesday, when he testifies for the first time publicly on the matter in a hearing held by the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
He is accused of not only driving a policy that led to an approximate 9,000 COVID-infected patients being forced from hospitals into New York nursing homes, but then also having “heavily edited” a report that allegedly sought to understate the impact.
“[T]he former Governor and his team issued disastrous, unscientific guidance on March 25, 2020, and have since attempted to deflect their actions,” said Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) in releasing the memo Monday. The 48-page document was sent by the panel’s majority staff to other members of the panel.
One of the report’s key findings was that a July 6, 2020, state health department report blaming nursing home staff for COVID deaths was edited by Cuomo and members of his administration.
Some of his former staff members were among those giving 50 hours of sworn testimony collected to compose the report released Monday.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told local news outlets Monday that the “committee came up short” and issued a report that did not find causality between the March 25, 2020, department of health guidance and deaths in nursing homes. He also claimed the report shows no evidence of “mandatory” nursing home admissions.
“This MAGA caucus report is all smoke and mirrors designed to continue to distract from [former President Donald] Trump’s failed pandemic leadership and is predictably sloppy, half-baked partisan screed built upon uncorroborated, cherry picked testimony and conclusions not supported by evidence or reality,” Azzopardi said, according to a report from Albany, NY, news station WRGB.
He acknowledged that some COVID calculations were initially withheld due to “legitimate concerns over accuracy.”
“The report also, for the first time, admits that it was the federal government – not state governments – that first decided COVID positive people can and should be sent from hospitals to nursing homes,” Azzopardi claimed. In addition, he said that more than a dozen states at the time followed a federal directive that nursing homes could accept COVID-19 patients as long as they could follow transmission-based precautions issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The controversial policy to route infected patients to nursing homes was rescinded in May 2020 under public pressure. In August 2021, Cuomo resigned under more extreme public pressure, including from President Biden, after a state attorney general’s report accused him of sexually harassing at least 11 women while in office, charges he denied and has never been charged with.
