The former New York governor said the Trump administration was to blame for the state’s excess deaths.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared before Congress on Sept. 10 to defend his decision-making in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic when he governed the state.
The governor’s March 2020 directive requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients has been widely criticized as a direct contributor to the state’s high number of pandemic fatalities.
Cuomo, however, told members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Monday the directive was not to blame for those deaths.
“All credible studies now say that COVID came into nursing homes through community spread and infected staff, not hospital admissions or readmissions,” he said.
Cuomo also pointed to early guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the foundation of his policy allowing COVID-19 patients to return to nursing homes.
Specifically, the March 9, 2020, recommendations issued by CMS stated that a nursing home can admit such residents “as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions.”
Facilities that could not follow those guidelines were advised against admitting COVID-positive residents, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the subcommittee’s chairman, pointed out.
“Did the federal government require that the state of New York mandate that its nursing homes admit or readmit residents [with COVID-19]? The answer is no,” Wenstrup said.
The congressman also noted that the Trump administration’s guidance did not require states to prohibit nursing homes from testing new or readmitted residents for COVID-19, as Cuomo required in New York.Cuomo’s actions were defended by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, who agreed with the former governor that President Donald Trump’s policies were primarily to blame for any excess pandemic deaths.
“I confess, Mr. Chairman, that I’m appalled by the majority’s decision to evade and bypass the central events of the epidemic for totally political reasons,” Raskin said, calling Trump’s response to the pandemic a failure.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Trump campaign for comment.
Others were more critical.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, asked the former governor whether it was his decision to change his state’s reporting of nursing home fatality data in May 2020 to exclude out-of-facility deaths, such as the deaths of residents who were transferred to hospitals.
Cuomo replied that it was not his decision and that he didn’t know whose it was.
Noting that the change artificially lowered New York’s reported number of nursing home fatalities, Ruiz asked whether that was the reason for the adjustment.
Cuomo said the change arose from increased inquiries “as the Republicans started this nursing home scandal theory.”
He said the requests for more subcategories of data resulted in less certainty in the reporting “because you were calling up a nursing home and basically asking them to do a forensic audit in the middle of a pandemic.”
“I was not going to put out a number unless I knew it was true,” Cuomo said.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) criticized Cuomo for securing a $5 million book deal in the midst of the pandemic, saying he would “never hold elected office again.”
The former governor resigned from his post in August 2021 amid allegations of sexual harassment.