Many Flaws in Cuomo Agency Report on Nursing Homes and COVID-19: Lawmaker

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at a media briefing in New York City on June 12, 2020. Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

A New York state report that sought to clear officials, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was deeply flawed, a federal lawmaker said.

The New York State Department of Health report primarily blamed staff members who officials said were infected when they went to work, spreading the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, to residents at nursing homes.

An order from Cuomo, a Democrat, that nursing home operators could not refuse to accept residents solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19, wasn’t a factor, according to the report. The order was changed in May.

In a letter (pdf) to the governor late Thursday, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), ranking member of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, outlined what he said were numerous flaws in the report.

Sufficient proof wasn’t presented to support the thesis that staff, rather than the March 25 order, were to blame for New York state’s high nursing home mortality rate, the letter stated.

The report “dismisses the nursing home order as a driving factor in patient deaths because the peak in nursing deaths did not align with peak hospital readmission,” according to the letter.

“This analysis, however, ignores the role that readmissions played in the rate of deaths, even if they were declining. Whether or not nursing home deaths would be less numerous and would decline far faster without your order is an important question this report fails to even address.”

A patient is loaded into the back of an ambulance by emergency medical workers outside Cobble Hill Health Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on April 17, 2020. John Minchillo/AP Photo

Lawmakers asked the Cuomo administration for a number of documents and information, including the total number of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 positive patients returned to a nursing home or other long-term care facility between March 25 and present.

Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo advisor, told The Epoch Times in a statement: “These travel sized Trumps can write as many election-year partisan attacks on taxpayer-funded letterhead as they want, but the fact is are they have no authority to launch their own inquiry.”