#Gov. Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home edict not to blame for deaths, report claims

The Cuomo administration’s controversial policy of requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals was not responsible for spreading infection and death among frail residents, state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker insisted in a report released Monday.

Instead, the report stated it was infected nursing home staffers and visitors who spread the killer COVID-19 into nursing homes, the report said.

Zucker referenced his agency’s March 25 order that directed nursing homes to admit or readmit coronavirus patients from hospitals. The patients were not tested before readmission to nursing homes — a policy that has since been repealed.

The report was largely a defense of that policy.

“Admission policies were not a significant factor in nursing home fatalities … The March 25 guidance was not the driving force in nursing home deaths,” Zucker said during a press conference.

Zucker and Gov. Andrew Cuomo had come under a firestorm of criticism for the policy, especially given that Cuomo had referred to how COVID-19 cuts down senior citizens “like fire through dry grass,” with families of nursing home residents and lawmakers calling for an independent probe.

The health commissioner said blaming the state’s March 25 order was a “false narrative.”

But Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a critic of the state’s nursing home policies, slammed the report as a “cover-up.”

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

“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.

“This is part of the beginning of a cover-up for their poor decisions,” he added.

Zucker, meanwhile, said he was surprised to learn that 37,500 nursing home staffers were infected with the virus during the peak of the pandemic — about one-quarter of the 158,000 nursing home workforce. Many of the staffers were asymptomatic and still caring for residents and inadvertently infected nursing home residents, the report said.

Testing also showed that 29 percent of the nursing home staffers had COVID-19 antibodies, according to the report.

Still, Zucker said the report found the peak of deaths in state nursing homes preceded the peak of admission of coronavirus patients from hospitals. The peak of nursing home fatalities occurred in April, while the largest number of patients transferred from hospitals to nursing homes occurred on April 14.

The analysis said 6,326 COVID patients were transferred from hospitals to nursing homes between March 25 and May 8.

The report also claimed that most patients admitted to nursing homes from hospitals were no longer contagious when admitted and therefore were not a source of the infection.

The analysis also found that nursing home quality was not a factor in the fatalities. The homes with higher rankings had a higher COVID-19 infection rate than those with lower rankings.

Zucker cited a Mount Sinai Medical Center revealing the presence of COVID-19 antibodies was discovered in blood specimens as early as Feb. 23.

The first coronavirus case was not reported in New York until March 1.

“This means that the virus was spreading in the NYC metropolitan region approximately three weeks earlier. The conclusions of the NYSDOH report of the root causes of nursing home fatalities in New York state are well supported by the data detailing nursing home staff COVID-19 illness,” said Mount Sinai president David Reich, who attended the Albany press conference along with Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling.

For his part, Cuomo said later Monday the Health Department study was an accurate reflection of the spread of the virus in nursing homes.

He also noted that he didn’t bar family members from visiting nursing home until March 13.

“Visitors were not initially barred. We weren’t testing visitors,” Cuomo said at his own press conference.

“By the time we had our first case March 1, [COVID-19] had been here weeks, if not months …,” said Cuomo, who blamed the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for not raising the alarm. “Oops.”

Cuomo said the report vindicates his administration’s actions in regards to the March 25 order.

“You had this political conspiracy theory … Pure politics. Ugly politics. The report tells the opposite story,” he insisted, in an oft-repeated refrain for the governor.

The report also downplayed whether the lack of personal protective equipment among nursing home staff — a common complaint during the worst of the pandemic in New York — was a contributing factor to nursing home infections and deaths.

Zucker said about 9 million pieces of PPE were sent to nursing homes.

“I would put the blame on the coronavirus. No one knew this virus was here when it was here,” the health commissioner said.