Governor Cuomo’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been rife with constitutional violations and concomitant abuse of power. At a minimum, the NY State Legislature needs to curtail the emergency powers he was granted to deal with the pandemic. More properly, the Legislature needs to act to remove Cuomo from power, not just for his obstruction of justice but also because of his blatant violation of the civil rights of millions of New Yorkers during the last year.
It has been widely reported that Governor Cuomo’s administration refused to disclose statistics about the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19. On March 25, 2020, Cuomo’s Health Department issued a directive that required nursing homes to admit medically stable coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. It is widely understood that this directive fueled a significant rise in fatalities in nursing homes, with around 13,000 dead as a result.
New York Assemblyman Mike Lawler is demanding that Gov. Andrew Cuomo release the full tape of his administration's conversation with Democratic lawmakers after a portion of the meeting revealed his top aide admitted to withholding data from Justice Department investigators probing nursing home deaths related to COVID-19.
• Updated: Feb. 12, 2021 7:07 p.m.
arrow Nurse at Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital goes on strike over safe staffing issues during the coronavirus pandemic, in New Rochelle. Mark Lennihan/AP/Shutterstock
When the first wave of COVID-19 hit Brooklyn Hospital Center, April Kehoe often found herself rushing between six different patients in a makeshift Intensive Care Unit far more than the one- or two- patient caseload typically considered safe for nurses in this setting.
The second surge has brought fewer hospitalizations, but Kehoe says the staffing shortages remain. She is still routinely assigned three or four intensive care patients at a time, a situation she says increases the risk of making medication errors or missing changes in a patient’s status.
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All told, the state now estimates that 12,743 nursing home residents have died of the coronavirus since the pandemic began, either in the homes or at hospitals. The previously reported total was 8,914.
Until yesterday, the state only reported nursing home deaths that occurred in the homes themselves. Residents that were transferred to hospitals and died there were counted as hospital deaths.
The count has been a point of sharp criticism for Cuomo and his administration since the early days of the pandemic. The state Health Department has said for months it planned to release new numbers, but only after it checked them for accuracy.