ALBANY (WCBS 880) — New York State’s top health official faced intense questioning from lawmakers on Thursday as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration continued to come under fire for its handling of nursing homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker faced especially pointed questions about a March 2020 directive telling nursing homes to accept COVID-19 positive patients returning from hospitals.
New York State Senate Republican leader Robert Ortt said the guidance changed on May 10, 2020, leading him to believe the directive “wasn’t working, or that in fact, it was contributing to the spread in these nursing home facilities.”
However, Zucker maintained that the directive was not the issue, but rather asymptomatic healthcare workers in the facilities.
“There were 37,000 staff who ended up having COVID and they brought it in inadvertently, at a time when we did not know about asymptomatic,” the health commissioner said.
Meanwhile, Republican State Sen. Jim Tedisco pointed to a report blaming more than 1,000 deaths on the March 2020 directive.
“For close to a year commissioner, you and the administration have denied the March 25 executive order had any substantial impact as to what the governor defined as a 'wildfire through dry grass,’” the senator said.
He noted that he wants the Cuomo administration to admit culpability in the situation.
Though, Gov. Cuomo has continuously come to the defense of his administration’s handling of the pandemic and nursing homes, saying the numbers being reported were always accurate.
Zucker's questioning came weeks after a report by the state Attorney General’s officer revealed New York underreported coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50% during the pandemic.
It also came after one of Cuomo’s top aides admitted to state lawmakers that the administration “froze” on releasing data on nursing home deaths because they feared it would be “used against” them.
During his testimony, Zucker refused to answer a question about whether Cuomo's office directed him not to respond to lawmakers' requests for nursing home data in 2020.
For months, lawmakers had called on Cuomo to release more data on nursing home deaths and nursing home residents that died at hospitals, but the administration was delayed.
Cuomo said he told lawmakers that the Department of Justice was seeking the data as part of an investigation and explained that would take precedence, meaning the Legislature would have to wait.
This morning, prior to the Senate hearing, former secretary to the governor Steven Cohen defended Cuomo's directive in a statement, saying it was "appropriate" and based on guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“When it became clear that New York was in the midst of a crisis, DoH issued an advisory addressing nursing homes (the "March 25 advisory") and the circumstances in which patients were to be admitted or readmitted into nursing homes. That advisory, and what followed its issuance, has been much discussed. What has been lost in the discussion is that the March 25 advisory followed federal CDC guidance.,” Cohen said in his statement. “Indeed, the CDC guidance on which the March 25 advisory is based is still in place. It has not been rescinded or superseded. Throughout last year, and into the Biden administration, the CDC has not changed the guidance. At a minimum, this suggests the CDC continues to support this guidance and believe that it was – and still is – appropriate. Given CDC's position, it follows that the March 25 advisory was also appropriate.”
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