The former governor is demanded to testify about a COVID-era order that resulted in “predictable but deadly consequences.”
More than two years after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace, a House subcommittee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for him to testify about COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes across the state during his tenure.
In a letter to the former governor, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic demanded that he testify about his March 2020 directive that ordered long-term care facilities to take in patients infected with COVID.
“This misguided decision effectively admitted thousands of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing predictable but deadly consequences for New York’s most vulnerable,” the Republican-led subcommittee told Mr. Cuomo, who was hailed by Democrats and members of the mainstream media for his leadership during the early days of the pandemic.
In addition to the March 2020 order itself, the subcommittee said they have found “troubling evidence” suggesting the Cuomo administration “at best downplayed” the order’s impact and “at worst covered them up.”
Death Numbers
One example the subcommittee cited is a January 2021 report complied by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who recently gained national attention for initiating a civil lawsuit that led to a historic $454 million fine on former President Donald Trump.
In that 76-page report, Ms. James rebuked the Cuomo administration’s official tally of about 8,700 nursing home residents who died from COVID-19, accusing the state of depressing the death toll by only counting those that occurred in the facilities while leaving out anyone who had died after being transferred to a hospital.
Extrapolating from a survey of about 10 percent of New York’s nursing homes, Ms. James estimated that the actual number of COVID deaths related to such facilities “may have been undercounted by as much as 50 percent.” Just hours after the report’s release, the state’s Department of Health (DOH) added some 3,800 hospital deaths, bringing the official number up to 12,473.
In the week following the report, the state DOH website updated the number again, which was then 13,163. A week after that, a group of Senate Democrats released a letter the Cuomo administration gave them. That letter raised the total COVID-19 death toll in nursing homes and other adult-care facilities to 15,049, apparently underscoring Ms. James’ estimate.
By Bill Pan
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