A group of state Senate Democrats, fed up with the handling of government residences for the elderly by Andrew Cuomo during the COVID-19 pandemic, advanced bills on Tuesday that would strengthen accountability and oversight of facilities. and the State Department of Health.
The passage of the health committee of the legislature to accept bills for a full vote in the Senate comes amid a state crisis in nursing homes that has resulted in the deaths of nearly 15,000 residents from the disease and both Cuomo as health commissioner Howard Zucker analyzed the embers to try to keep that number from the public.
Cuomo critics blame his administration for causing deaths by forcing residents of nursing homes hospitalized with COVID-19 to return to vulnerable facilities amid a shortage of hospital beds and then d ‘have reported coronavirus fatalities linked to long-term care centers.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), chairman of the Health Committee, on Tuesday accused the Democratic governor of “stepping on” the state legislature for months by refusing to publish full figures on the number of residential residents of elderly people who died due to the coronavirus.
Rivera said Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker sat on the data until state Attorney General Letitia James released a scathing report late last month accusing the administration. of deceiving the public by subjecting the deaths to 50%.
“As we suspected and feared, the second floor had been paving the way for us,” Rivera said during a virtual public committee meeting on the bills, referring to the governor’s office on the second floor in the State Capitol building in Albany.
The Department of Health, when it reported deaths at residences, had only included the approximately 8,700 residents at the time who died in a long-term care center, not those who succumbed to the virus in hospitals.
Hours after the Attorney General’s report was released, Zucker began cleaning up revealing that at least 4,000 more residents of nursing homes had died from COVID-19 in hospitals.
Last week, a judge in Albany even ripped off Cuomo-Zucker’s Department of Health in a ruling on his failure to provide total deaths in nursing homes to a surveillance group of the government.
One of the Senate bills under review Tuesday and sponsored by Rivera would require the Department of Health to report the deaths of all residents to residences, including those “transferred to a hospital and deaths in the hospital.”
The bill, if passed, would be applied retroactively to March 1, 2020, as the pandemic began in the U.S.
“So that we can make a good policy, you have to have good information … so that we can prevent unnecessary deaths,” Rivera said.
Republican lawmakers jumped on Cuomo’s wagon.
“For the families of those who lost their loved ones in nursing homes, you know that today is one more step towards accountability, but the road is far from over,” Rob Ortt said. , of Lockport, leader of the state Senate majority.
He and other GOPers are pushing for the federal Department of Justice to investigate the state’s actions.
“The legislature should hold bipartisan hearings, using the power of summons, and the Department of Justice should expand its efforts to examine what happened here,” State Assembly minority leader Will said Barclay, of Syracuse.
Cuomo spokesman Gary Holmes responded in an email to The Post: “We said we would post additional data once our audit was over and before the commissioner’s budget testimony. We are doing it. ”
“While the GA report correctly noted the Department’s efforts to support staffing, testing, PPE and conducting inspections, it captured the data incorrectly, so we published what had been audited at that point to rectify the record “.