Former New York Gov.Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, will testify before Congress next week regarding his response to the COVID pandemic.
Cuomo will be questioned publicly for the first time on September 10, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said in a press release. The press release said Cuomo would be questioned “about his Administration’s issuance of unscientific guidance that forced New York nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit COVID-19 positive patients.”
On March 25, 2020, then-Gov. Cuomo’s office issued a mandate requiring nursing homes in New York to accept COVID-positive patients on short notice, whether they were equipped to isolate and care for them or not. The policy led to nearly 13,000 nursing home deaths – or about 14% of New York’s pre-pandemic nursing home population, according to a report from the Empire Center, a non-partisan think tank.
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The Cuomo administration undercounted the deaths by including thousands of nursing home patient deaths with hospital deaths since the patients had been transferred to hospitals before they died.
In a thread posted to X, the subcommittee said that it had privately interviewed Cuomo about his nursing home policies and that he was “shockingly callous when discussing New York’s nursing home mortality rate.”
“…let’s say there’s a 3,000 [deaths] differential, 2500. Who cares? What difference does it make in any dimension to anyone about anything?” Cuomo reportedly asked, according to the subcommittee, which will be releasing the transcription before the former governor testifies.
Also during that interview, according to the subcommittee, Cuomo claimed he was unaware of the March 25 mandate until a month after it had been issued. He then reportedly claimed that nursing homes had “an escape valve” and were not actually forced to admit COVID-positive patients. He then said his only regret was that nursing homes were “confused” by the mandate, before clarifying that he didn’t “accept the premise that they were actually confused by it.”
“Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York’s nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH). “On September 10, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from the former governor about New York’s potentially fatal nursing home policies.”
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“During closed-door testimony, Mr. Cuomo was shockingly callous when pressed to explain discrepancies in nursing home death counts, repeatedly deflected responsibility for the nursing home directive, and most egregiously, showed little remorse for the thousands of lives lost,” Wenstrup added. “A true leader owns up to his mistakes and takes responsibility for wrongdoing. That is not what we saw from Mr. Cuomo during his term as governor nor during his transcribed interview. We hope that during his public hearing next week, Mr. Cuomo will stop dodging accountability and honestly answer the American people.”
