Governor Andrew Cuomo accused The Post Friday of launching a partisan attack, for simply asking if he would support an independent investigation into the deaths in nursing homes in New York during the coronavirus pandemic.
The state executive director’s thin-skinned response was immediately questioned by other media and even by other Democrats who also questioned a March 25 directive from the Cuomo administration that forced nursing homes to receive COVID patients. -19 at early height. of the virus outbreak.
When asked by The Post at a press conference in Albany if he would support an independent investigator to conduct a review of the state of nursing home management during the COVID-19 crisis, Cuomo said: “I don’t think its categorization is correct. I think it is a political problem.
“I think it is the New York Post. I think it’s Michael Goodwin, I think it’s Bob McManus, ”he said, referring to two Post columnists. “I think it’s Fox TV. I think everything is politically motivated. If someone were to look at the facts, they would know that it is completely absurd in their appearance, “said the governor, releasing his repeated political rhetoric instead of answering the question.
“People died in nursing homes, that is very unfortunate. In the top line we have alone, we are 35th in the nation in percentage of nursing home deaths. Go talk to 34 other states. First, go talk to the Republican states now, Florida, Texas, Arizona, ask them what’s going on in nursing homes. Everything is political, “Cuomo criticized.
But Cuomo was challenged in real time on social media for rejecting questions about what caused more than 6,300 COVID-19-related nursing home deaths. Critics have argued that the state Department of Health has reduced the number of deaths because the count does not include nursing home residents who were affected by the killer bug and were transported to hospitals for treatment where they later died.
“The Post is far from being the only media outlet calling for an independent investigation. From the @timesunion edit board, ”Times Union of Albany editor Casey Seilor said in a tweet moments after Cuomo issued his claim, and linked to that newspaper’s editorial.
Cuomo has come under fire for the controversial March 25 state order requiring nursing homes to admit or readmit COVID-19 recovering patients discharged from hospitals without testing during the peak of the pandemic. He later repealed the policy after the fierce criticism, many of it as a result of The Post’s coverage of the nursing home debacle.
The state Department of Health recently released an internal report that blamed infected nursing home employees and visitors, not its admission policy, for spreading the disease to vulnerable and fragile nursing home residents. Critics dismissed the report’s findings as selfish and not credible.
Meanwhile, fellow Cuomo Democrats in the state Legislature who are holding hearings on nursing home deaths next month disputed the governor’s claim that wanting to get to the bottom of what happened is a partisan issue.
“I don’t think the Health Department report was adequate or comprehensive,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Liz Krueger (a Democrat from Manhattan).
“We don’t think asking questions about what happened in nursing homes is a partisan issue. It’s about learning about what happened so we can come up with a protocol so it doesn’t happen again, “she said.
Krueger was among 22 Democratic senators who sent a letter to Cuomo last month urging a review of state oversight of nursing homes.
And towards the end of the press conference, another journalist, Nick Reisman of Spectrum News, followed up with The Post’s consultation with the governor and asked, “Why not have an independent review of what happened in these nursing homes by doing something like that?
Cuomo replied, “No, you could do a lot of reviews and research, but you need facts first. You look at the facts in that report. It is not even close, there is no objective basis. The deadlines don’t even work. “
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