New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) “alone is to blame” for his decision to force nursing home providers to accept COVID-19 patients, a White House official said in late June.
“His reckless response did not follow [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] and [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, devastating the senior population — and no amount of revisionist history can erase Governor Cuomo’s grossly incompetent decisions,” Hogan Gidley, principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement.
New York later reversed the controversial policy. The governor originally had stated that the policy was in accord with directives from CMS and CDC.
More than 6,000 deaths have been reported in New York nursing homes during the course of the pandemic. Cuomo has attributed the heavy toll to nursing home staff. “What all the data says is the reason you had infections in the nursing homes were because the staff brought in the infections,” he said. “It is that the staff got infected, they came to work and they brought in the infection.”
From the July/August 2020 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News
