‘Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else … because the federal government missed the boat…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to insist that his disastrous policy forcing nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients had nothing to do with New York’s alarming death rate.
.@NYGovCuomo shifts the blame to the federal government for NY’s nursing home deaths.
He says his policy of sending COVID+ patients was not a mistake.
“We had the virus coming from Europe when the federal government told us the virus was coming from China.” pic.twitter.com/jtEUiQm6jH
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 23, 2020
More than 6,000 people have died from the coronavirus within New York’s nursing homes.
State Republicans have attributed that number to Cuomo’s directive requiring long-term care facilities to accept COVID-19 patients after they were released from nearby hospitals.
Cuomo, however, blasted such criticism as “pure politics,” and blamed the federal government for his office’s failures.
“Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else, because we had more people die, because the federal government missed the boat and never told us this virus was coming from Europe and not from China,” Cuomo told MSNBC on Monday.
“So, New York had more cases, more deaths, and more deaths in nursing home because that’s who the virus affects,” Cuomo explained. “It affects senior citizens, we know that.”
Cuomo is right about one thing: Government officials did indeed know that COVID-19 disproportionately affects elderly, vulnerable citizens.
But he sent COVID-19 patients into nursing homes anyways, allowing the virus to “spread like fire through dry grass,” according to an investigation by ProPublica.
The Democratic governor, however, has refused to cooperate with state Republicans demanding answers from his office.
“It’s all a political charade, and it’s an ugly one frankly, to talk about a number of deaths and suggest there was politics added,” he argued.