People in New York deserve "accountability and transparency" about the COVID-19 death toll in their state's nursing homes, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo has "deflected responsibility" for his mistakes, and that can't go on any longer, Rep. Steve Scalise says in a scathing opinion piece.
"Many nursing homes in New York weren’t prepared to accept COVID-positive patients, yet Cuomo ignored federal guidelines and forced them to accept contagious patients anyway," the Louisiana Republican wrote for the New York Post Thursday. "We need to know why ... other states got it right — what went wrong in New York?"
COVID-19 has killed more than 6,000 people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the state of New York, noted Scalise. As the ranking member of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, he added, he's charged with investigating preparedness and response for the crisis and "by all accounts, New York's handling of the crisis in its nursing homes has been a colossal failure."
The investigation centers on Cuomo's March 25 order forcing nursing homes to accept patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and prohibiting homes from testing patients for the disease before admitting them.
"This policy, which remained in place for more than six weeks, likely contributed significantly to the thousands of elderly deaths in New York nursing homes," said Scalise.
But Cuomo has deflected blame to several others, including the Post and most recently to President Donald Trump, claiming the state is following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Scalise pointed out that PolitiFact has rated his statement on the CDC "mostly false," because federal guidance from several weeks before said nursing homes should admit people from hospitals where the disease was present only if the homes could follow CDC guidelines on quarantining.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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