Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his team were involved in the creation of the pandemic policy that mandated that nursing homes admit COVID-19 -positive patients, according to a memo published Monday by House Republicans .
“The Cuomo Administration is responsible for recklessly exposing New York’s most vulnerable population to COVID-19,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, in a press statement. “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.”
Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor in 2021, is scheduled to testify before the select subcommittee at 2 p.m. Tuesday to answer for the March 25, 2020, policy from the New York Department of Health that prevented nursing homes from denying admittance to patients “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”
The order resulted in at least 9,000 COVID-19-positive patients being readmitted to nursing homes in New York state, resulting in as many as 15,000 nursing home-related deaths from COVID-19, according to the memo.
“My goal is to get answers for my constituents,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), the only subcommittee member from the Empire State, told the Washington Examiner about Cuomo’s testimony. “They, like so many in New York, lost loved ones, and they are very upset that Gov. Cuomo has taken no responsibility for the actions of his administration.”
Cuomo has consistently denied any involvement in the 2020 policy, arguing in June during his transcribed interview with select subcommittee staff that a mid-level staffer at the New York State Department of Health issued the directive.
But the Republican memo, the culmination of more than 50 hours of testimony from former Cuomo administration officials, finds that the ex-governor and his team had a direct hand in establishing the policy.
Howard Zucker, the former commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, told select subcommittee staff during a transcribed interview in December 2023 that the Greater New York Hospital Association directly requested the nursing home order from the governor and his team.
“Greater New York Hospital Association called the governor and the team — we were all there in a conversation, a lot of us were there — and said that we have individuals who are better, they have recovered, and they are just sitting in a hospital bed,” Zucker said in December. “And the long-term care facilities were not going to take them and that we needed to do something, which generated this document.”
Zucker noted for context that hospital beds were scarce in New York in March 2020 and that it was a desperate situation.
Cuomo also told select subcommittee staff during his transcribed interview that the order was rescinded “because the public relations after April 20 had made the public so nervous and so concerned, anyone who had family in a nursing home was agitated and frightened.”
The Republican memo also found that Cuomo’s inner circle was directly involved in lowering the reported number of nursing home-related deaths by excluding all COVID-19 deaths of nursing home patients that occurred in hospitals.
Evidence uncovered by the subcommittee indicated that the methodology for counting the number of COVID-19 deaths changed as of May 2020 at the direction of the Executive Chamber, Cuomo’s inner circle of advisers.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement following the release of the memo that the Select Subcommittee has “found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
“This MAGA caucus report is all smoke and mirrors designed to continue to distract from 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.
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Malliotakis said Cuomo’s response to the whole ordeal is “heartless” and that he “shows no remorse.”
“He’s tried to blame everybody for it: the health commissioner, some lower mid-level staffer at the Department of Health, blaming the nursing home staff, the nursing home operators, CDC, the CMS, President Trump, everybody but himself,” Malliotakis said.
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