New York Congressman Elise Stefanik demanded a federal investigation into Governor Cuomo’s handling of COVID-19 in a nursing home.
His call came after a new report showed the country had secretly changed the way it publicly reported deaths at home due to the virus.
In early May the state stopped counting patients in nursing homes who died from COVID in hospitals in the official calculation of deaths in nursing homes, Daily Caller reports. Now it only includes deaths that occurred at the nursing home facility itself.
Cuomo is taking heat for the nursing home population that is vulnerable to damage by coronavirus – with a state death toll of at least 5,300, and that’s with the country’s new counting method that ignores deaths of outside facilities.
“Today I joined my @NewYorkGOP colleague in the House of Representatives to request a federal investigation into the failed Cuomo nursing home policy. NOW they recognize that they are unethically changing the way they report deaths in nursing homes. A non-negotiable tragedy for NY-NEED ANSWERS, “Stefanik, a northern Republican, said in a tweet.
Cuomo’s executive order on March 25 forced state nursing homes and helped living facilities, many of which did not have the equipment to stop the spread of the disease, to receive residents with COVID-19. The decision proved to have fatal consequences, with one third of all deaths from the corona virus in the state occurring in nursing homes.
Florida – which issued an order around the same time keeping COVID-19 patients out of nursing homes – had looks 1/7 death in a nursing home suffered by New York.
Stefanik joined the growing list of New York lawmakers demanding an inquiry into Cuomo’s pandemic policy. Former Governor Pataki and Member of the Staten Island State Assembly, Nicole Malliotakis, also called for an investigation.
“On March 24, Governor Cuomo said, ‘My mother cannot be thrown away, your mother cannot be thrown away,’ but the next day she signed an executive order mandating nursing homes – where our most vulnerable mother and our most vulnerable father live – to accept positive COVID patients, “Malliotakis to Fox News early this week.
When asked about deaths in nursing homes, Cuomo said he did his best.
“As a society, you cannot save everyone, you will lose people, that’s life,” he told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday. “But we do everything we can.”
