Needed: Independent probe of coronavirus devastation in NY nursing homes
By: nypost (New York Post)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Calls are rising for an independent investigation of the Cuomo administration's handling of nursing homes amid the coronavirus crisis — and rightly so.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's own investigation, which he handpicked protege Letitia James to lead, plainly won't get to the bottom of many key issues: The gov and his team won't even admit that forcing facilities to take in COVID-positive patients was a mistake. That mandate is still in effect.
Back on March 10, Cuomo bragged of how the state was protecting residents of New York's 1,100 nursing homes and adult-care facilities. "You see that in the 22 deaths in Washington compared to New York with no deaths," he said. "Right? Same number of cases, look how much higher Washington is. Because it's about senior citizens."
Yes, the elderly are the most virus-vulnerable, with those aged 60 and up accounting for 85 percent of Empire State corona deaths.
But Cuomo didn't protect them: Washington state has fewer than 1,000 coronavirus deaths total, while New York lost 5,000 lives in nursing and adult-care homes alone.
And, two weeks after Cuomo's big brag, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker ordered nursing homes to take in corona-positive patients. Neither Zucker nor Cuomo explained that March 25 mandate. The gov insists it's in keeping with federal guidelines, yet they call for no such regulation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised nursing homes: "Keep COVID-19 from entering your facility."
How did his team even think up the rule? Did the politically potent hospital lobby push for it?
The gov is disingenuous at best when he claims homes need merely tell the Health Department if they can't handle coronavirus patients. Donny Tuchman, CEO of Brooklyn's Cobble Hill Health Center, asked about transferring out some of his COVID-positive patients back on April 10. More than 50 of his residents have died.
Zucker's order not only forbids nursing homes from rejecting the infected — it doesn't even let them require testing for the disease before admission. Only in late April, a month after the "must accept" order, did the state begin reaching out to check on homes' ability to administer tests, officials in several counties told The Post. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan offered to pick test kits up in Albany himself — and never heard back.
The James investigation will focus on whether homes are "following the rules" — not on those deadly rules themselves. An independent probe is a must.
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