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The New York Times is now reporting that aides meticulously schemed for months to conceal the number of virus-related fatalities that were being counted in nursing homes, with the scan lasting at least five months.
According to the report, the effort to hide the true numbers included halting the publication of a scientific paper, which included the true tally, and the sending of at least two letters drafted by the Health Department and intended to be shared with state lawmakers.
When the first COVID-19 wave threatened to overwhelm New York hospitals in March last year, Cuomo’s administration put a policy in place that prevented nursing homes from turning away patients who were treated for the virus.
Initially, the administration reported that approximately 6,000, and a recount found that the number was at least double.
“Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state’s own health officials, including the commissioner, Howard Zucker, from releasing the true death toll to the public or sharing it with state lawmakers, these interviews and documents showed,” the report states.
The incidents reported by The Times came at the same time Cuomo was publishing his book about leadership during the pandemic.
“The whole brouhaha here is overblown to the point where there are cynical suggestions offered for the plain and simple truth that the chamber wanted only to release accurate information that they believed was totally unassailable,” Elkan Abramowitz, a lawyer representing Cuomo’s office, said in a statement.
“The chamber was never satisfied that the numbers that they were getting from DOH were accurate.”
Cuomo remains under investigation by the FBI after an initial probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that his administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent.
“We are getting anxious over here on this report,” Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa said in an email to health officials and Cuomo aides on June 18, which was reviewed by The Times.
DeRosa reportedly laid out what the strongest points that should be made in the report were “from (her) perspective,” which each highlighting that readmitting infected residents to nursing homes was problematic, noting that it “needs to be able to stand up to scrutiny and definitively tell the story.”
The complete New York Times report can be found here.
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