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In March, before the outbreak peaked and projections were daunting, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an order to send recovering COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing homes to free up beds for potential patients.
That move has drawn criticisms from many, with some who lost family members joining some elected officials in calling for an independent probe into that decision, something Cuomo has rebuffed.
“If Gov. Cuomo’s administration had spent one-hundredth the amount of time with investigators in the nursing homes making sure they were protecting our seniors, we would have a lot fewer deaths in New York state,” Sen. Boyle said. to CBS this week.
Cuomo has been insistent that the thousands of nursing home deaths had nothing to do with his order in March requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients who were medically stable without testing them, stating that the deaths were caused by infected staff members who spread the virus.
“I wouldn’t do an investigation whether or not it’s political, everybody can make that decision for themselves. I think you’d have to be blind to think it’s not political,” he said.
“Just look at where it comes from and look at the sources and look at their political affiliation and look at what publications raise it and what media networks raise it. It’s kind of incredible.
“There is no such thing as a person who is trusted by all Democrats and Republicans,” Cuomo added. “That person doesn’t exist.”
According to the state Department of Health, which performed its own inquiry, there have been 3,405 confirmed COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, and another 2,786 presumed virus-related fatalities.
“We’ve said from the start that protecting our most vulnerable populations, including nursing home residents, is our top priority,” health officials said. “The Department of Health has conducted more than 1,300 COVID-19 focus inspections — at least one onsite visit to every single nursing home and adult care facility in the state — since March 1.
“As the department’s in-depth analysis of nursing home data found, COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to asymptomatic nursing home staff. We continue to support and protect those frontline nursing home workers with more than 14 million pieces of PPE.”
Northwell Health was tasked with conducting an investigation for the state on COVID-19 cases in nursing homes earlier this year, which also determined that the virus was spread by infected staff, not COVID-19 patients that were placed in nursing homes.
"This important data-based study confirms what we saw in our own facilities and around the state --that when the virus hit our local communities, it quickly spread through asymptomatic carriers into our nursing homes, hospitals, places of worship and other congregate settings,” Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health said.
“This study highlighted a critically important fact that the overwhelming majority of hospital patients sent back into nursing homes were not only medically stable, they were no longer contagious, and that 81 percent of the nursing homes receiving COVID patients from New York's hospitals already had the virus.”
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