#Gov. Cuomo sent 6,300 COVID-19 patients to nursing homes during pandemic

New York dispatched more than 6,300 recovering coronavirus patients into vulnerable nursing homes during the height of the pandemic, officials said this week.

The transfers were made under a now-scrapped, highly criticized policy that barred nursing homes from refusing to take in COVID-19 patients — a directive from the Cuomo administration intending to free up hospital beds for the sickest patients.

New York is now home to one of the highest nursing home death tolls in the nation, with more than 6,400 deaths in homes and long-term care facilities tied to the virus.

But Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration argue that the controversial policy is not to blame for the tragic figure.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker instead said the virus was spread by the 20,000 infected home staffers, many of whom kept going to work in March and April unaware that they were sick — findings outlined in a DOH report issued Monday.

“Facts matter. And those are the facts,” Zucker said during a news conference Monday.

The report backs claims Cuomo had been making for weeks that sick staff, not transported patients, had caused the deadly spread through nursing homes.

Critics in the state Legislature have challenged the report’s credibility, with lawmakers planning to move ahead with public hearings on the nursing home death, NY1 reported.

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), condemned the report as a “cover-up.”

“This is a conflict of interest for the health department to investigate its own poor decisions,” Kim said on Monday.

“For them to say that the decision of sending COVID-19 patients from hospitals into nursing did not contribute to increasing infections is ludicrous,” Kim said.

Cuomo senior adviser Richard Azzopardi clapped back at some of the criticism Monday.

“Once again, Ron Kim doesn’t know what he’s talking about and apparently doesn’t care about embarrassing himself,” Azzopardi said at the time. “The DOH report was peer-reviewed by experts at Mount Sinai and Northwell Health, and it’s disturbing that this politician is refusing to believe facts, science and dates on a calendar.”

With Post wires