Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to testify publicly Tuesday before a congressional subcommittee critical of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as it began to spread through the state’s nursing homes in 2020.
Members of the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released a report ahead of Cuomo’s testimony that accused the Democrat of staging a “cover up” to hide mistakes that endangered nursing home residents.
“The Cuomo Administration is responsible for recklessly exposing New York’s most vulnerable population to COVID-19,” U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, the Ohio Republican who chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, said in a statement Monday.
Cuomo’s spokesperson accused the committee of wasting taxpayer dollars on an investigation that found “no evidence of wrongdoing.”
“This MAGA caucus report is all smoke and mirrors designed to continue to distract from Trump’s failed pandemic leadership,” said Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi. He called it a “sloppy, half baked partisan screed built upon uncorroborated, cherry picked testimony and conclusions not supported by evidence or reality.”
Cuomo resigned from office in August 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, which he denies.
Cuomo was widely seen as a reassuring figure in the early months of the pandemic, but his reputation suffered after revelations that his administration released an incomplete accounting of the number of deaths at nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Critics have also zeroed in on a directive issued in March of 2020 that initially barred nursing homes from refusing to accept patients just because they’d had COVID-19.
The order was issued to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients who were no longer sick enough to require hospitalization, but needed nursing home care for other conditions and couldn’t simply be discharged or sent home.
More than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients were released from hospitals into nursing homes under the directive, which rescinded amid speculation that it had accelerated outbreaks.
There were about 15,000 COVID-19 deaths among long-term care residents in New York, far more than the initial number disclosed.
The congressional committee said it had determined that Cuomo and his top aides approved the directive and later tried to deflect blame by ordering up an unscientific report concluding that the rescinded March directive likely had little impact on fatalities.
Top former Cuomo administration officials were interviewed as part of the investigation.
Cuomo testified before the subcommittee in June , but it was behind closed doors.
Cuomo has dismissed the subcommittee, writing in the Daily Beast Monday that it was seeking to turn attention away from former President Donald Trump’s pandemic leadership failures. He said it was “continuing to politicize COVID rather than learn from it.”
“The GOP strategy was, and still is, to fabricate theories to blame the states and governors for the COVID deaths,” he wrote.
A state report commissioned by Cuomo’ successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and released this summer found that while the policies on how nursing homes should handle COVID-19 were “rushed and uncoordinated,” they were based on the best understanding of the science at the time.
Michael Hill, The Associated Press
