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Governor Andrew M. Cuomo provides a coronavirus update from the Red Room at the State Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021.
(Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo) Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Tribune News Service Brendan J.
Lyons, Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS) ALBANY — Former Gov.
Andrew M. Cuomo is scheduled to testify publicly Tuesday before a congressional subcommittee that has been investigating New York’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic — and the circumstances that led to the deaths of more than 15,000 nursing home residents. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said the panel will question Cuomo on his “administration’s issuance of unscientific guidance that forced New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19 positive patients.
” Cuomo, who is scheduled to appear before Congress on Sept. 10, appeared in front of the subcommittee in June for a closed-door interview that lasted roughly seven hours. During that interview, Cuomo told the subcommittee that he was initially unaware of a controversial directive that had been issued by the state Department of Health in March 2020 directing New York’s nursing homes to accept residents even if they had tested positive for COVID-19.
The former governor’s assertion — that he was unaware of a directive that had been issued to ease pressure on New York hospitals as they became overwhelmed with patients — echoes public statements he made a month later, in April 2020, when he claimed during a news conference that he was not familiar with the advisory. Sources familiar with a now-closed FBI investigation of the Cuomo administration’s decision to issue that directive told the Times Union that a draft was edited for more than two days by the Health Department and members of the governor’s office before it was issued on March 25, 2020. Cuomo’s testimony that he was unaware of the directive — even nearly four weeks later — means that he was not briefed on or otherwise part of the discussions of one of the most consequential decisions that was made at the time to deal with hospitals potentially running out of bed space.
In addition, former Health Department officials interviewed in that federal investigation, which was headed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, told the FBI that Cuomo was frequently on their calls with his coronavirus task force, but would usually only listen without speaking.
At least one of those former officials told the FBI that Larry Schwartz, a former secretary to the governor who was brought back to help with the public health response, may have had a hand in editing drafts of the nursing home advisory. Schwartz told the Times Union in June that information “is false.” “I don’t know who said that, or who told the FBI that; that is factually an inaccurate statement.
I had nothing to do with that. Zero,” Schwartz said. “I had zero to do with anything involving nursing home policies.
” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said there was a distinction between staff of the governor’s office and members of the coronavirus task force, who were volunteers. He issued a new statement Tuesday accusing the congressional subcommittee of engaging in “partisan political games.” Memo triggered confusion The Times Union reported exclusively in June 2021 that the origin of that memo to nursing homes stemmed from an urgent late-night call to Health Department officials from a top administrator at a Newburgh hospital.
He informed them a van had just dropped off more than 15 nursing home residents who had tested positive for COVID-19, and if more followed it could create a critical shortage of beds. None of the nursing home residents clinically required hospitalization. Other nursing facility operators were also beginning to move residents infected with COVID-19 to hospitals out of fear they could spread the illness in the assisted-living facilities.
Cuomo had been publicly declaring that New York would not be able to maintain enough hospital beds for coronavirus patients if infection rates continued to climb. Inside the governor’s office, that March 2020 phone call from an official at Montefiore St. Luke’s hospital in Newburgh prompted the administration to craft the hastily prepared memo that directed nursing homes to allow residents afflicted with COVID-19 to remain in or return to those facilities, even if they were being discharged from hospitals while still testing positive.
The memorandum had stated: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the (nursing home) solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” Cuomo’s office has said the caveat was that nursing homes could only accept those infected residents if they were capable of caring for them and keeping them quarantined from other residents. But the memo didn’t explicitly state that — although it noted “standard precautions must be maintained” — and it caused confusion in the industry.
Family members of nursing home residents told the Times Union four years ago that they saw their loved ones — often over Zoom or FaceTime calls — being occasionally tended to by nursing home employees who weren’t wearing masks, and on floors where other residents were testing positive for the disease. The guidance was rescinded less than two months after it was issued. U.
S. Rep. Marc Molinaro was Dutchess County executive during the pandemic and frequently on “control room calls” with county leaders and members of Cuomo’s coronavirus task force, including in March 2020 when Molinaro said the nursing home directive was discussed.
Molinaro said the former governor had noted the directive, which he later defended after saying he was made aware of it, was consistent to one issued by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Cuomo also said that nursing homes at the time “did not communicate with him any objection to this order,” the congressman added. “When the order was issued, he was on a public briefing specifically saying that nursing homes must accept individuals and did not have the right to turn away individuals because they tested positive with COVID,” Molinaro said.
“We know that the order was issued with his knowledge, because it was communicated directly on control room calls that I participated in ...
and others were all party to, so there’s a bit of absurdity to making that statement.” Cuomo’s spokesman said Molinaro’s statement that the former governor discussed the directive on a “public briefing” is “demonstrably false.” He said Cuomo did not take part in the control room calls, which included local health commissioners, county executives, state officials and members of the governor’s coronavirus task force.
Conflicting testimony A focus of the subcommittee has been the circumstances that led to the deaths of more than 15,000 nursing home residents in New York, and allegations that Cuomo’s administration withheld data on the number of fatalities in those facilities. At least six former top aides in Cuomo’s administration, including former state Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, have testified before the panel. Zucker, who later became deputy director for Global Health at the U.
S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a position he recently left — testified before the subcommittee more than six months ago. Former Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa also appeared before the panel for a closed-door interview this summer; subcommittee sources said many of her responses were that she could not recall details of matters she was asked about.
“She was pretty much like the governor, where she claimed to have been unaware of the existence of the March 25, 2020, nursing home order until nearly a month after it was issued,” Wenstrup told the Times Union in July. “And I will say that somewhat contradicts what Dr. Howard Zucker, the former commissioner of the Department of Health, had said and (he) testified that Ms.
DeRosa played a critical role in the must-admit order.” Wenstrup said that DeRosa also expressed remorse for the lives lost in nursing homes during the pandemic, “but she deflected responsibility, as the governor did, and really said that this deadly guidance was a mid-level employee that was making that decision. But she has a responsibility to review the directives published by the Cuomo administration, apparently, or she should have.
” Gregory Morvillo, DeRosa’s attorney, accused Republicans on the subcommittee of “playing political games.” “Dr. Zucker did not say ‘Melissa played a critical role in the March 25 nursing home admissions policy guidance,’” Morvillo said.
“Melissa played no role in the drafting or implementation of the March 25 guidance. What we understand Dr. Zucker did say is that Melissa, as secretary to the governor, played a critical role in COVID response, which is true.
” Wenstrup also said that Cuomo did not express remorse about deaths in New York’s nursing homes during the pandemic when he was interviewed in June. “After much political distortion, the people of this great nation deserve to know the real, fact-based answers: Why did more Americans die during COVID than any other country on the globe?” Cuomo told the subcommittee, according to a copy of his opening statement he released on the day he appeared before the panel. “What went wrong here and how do we make sure it doesn’t happen next time?” Cuomo’s statement asserted that Republicans have sought to “distract from their own culpability and muddy the waters.
” “Four years ago the Republican administration made many accusations and called for investigations into New York’s COVID response: those investigations have been completed,” Cuomo’s statement read. “The Department of Justice — three times — the Manhattan District Attorney, the New York Attorney General, and the New York State Assembly all investigated and not a single one validated the Republican administration’s accusation that New York’s nursing home admissions guidance was the cause of COVID being introduced into nursing homes.” Other members of Cuomo’s administration who have appeared before the subcommittee include Dr.
Eleanor Adams, a former special advisor to Zucker; Gareth Rhodes, who was a member of the administration’s coronavirus task force; Jim Malatras, a former Cuomo advisor and SUNY chancellor; Beth Garvey, a former special counsel to the governor; and Linda Lacewell, a former task force member and superintendent of the state Department of Financial Services. The subcommittee cited the report from a law firm that conducted an impeachment investigation of Cuomo for the state Assembly prior to his resignation in August 2021. It concluded that a Department of Health report on nursing home deaths during the pandemic had been heavily vetted by the governor’s office and underreported the number of fatalities in those facilities.
The Assembly report asserted the Health Department’s data “was substantially revised by the executive chamber and largely intended to combat criticisms regarding former Gov. Cuomo’s directive that nursing homes should readmit residents that had been diagnosed with COVID-19.” ___ (c)2024 the Times Union (Albany, N.
Y.) Visit the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.
) at www.timesunion.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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