JUST IN: Top Cuomo Aides Reportedly Intervened to Alter State Report, Hide Thousands of Nursing Home Deaths Last Summer
Photo credit: Matthew Cavanaugh, Getty Images.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-NY) terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week continues, as a New York Times article published late Thursday is a contender to swing media attention away from the mounting sexual harassment accusations against him and back to his administration’s attempt to cover-up nursing home deaths due to Covid-19.
According to the Times, an internal report written by New York state health officials said that more than 9,000 nursing home residents had died from Covid-19 as of June of last year, a number that “alarmed” Cuomo’s top aides. Before the report was made public, the aides rewrote the report to omit the damning death toll, a politically sensitive topic due to Cuomo’s controversial order prohibiting nursing homes from refusing to readmit patients released from hospitals after treatment for Covid-19.
The revision, which the Times characterized as an “extraordinary intervention,” happened as Cuomo was starting to write his previously-lauded-but-now-mocked memoir touting his management of the pandemic.
The true figures finally came out earlier this year, with the excuse being offered that New York officials were concerned that the administration of former President Donald Trump might initiate a politically-targeted investigation into the matter.
The Times’ reporters interviewed six people “with direct knowledge of the discussions” held among Cuomo and his top aides, and reviewed draft and final versions of documents released by state officials.
The article describes “bitter exchanges” between Cuomo’s inner circle and the New York State Health Department regarding the original draft of a chart that accurately showed the nursing home death toll as 50 percent higher than what the Cuomo administration was admitting at the time.
Officials at the Health Department felt that Cuomo’s office “wanted to simplify too much,” and “worried it was no longer a true scientific report, but feared for their jobs if they did not go along,” according to the Times.
Read the article at the New York Times.
