#Team Cuomo’s latest ridiculous nursing-home-death dodge

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Gov. Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Zucker are stonewalling efforts to get a full accounting of the number of nursing-home residents who died of the coronavirus.
Don Pollard

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Health Department has no shame — not over its deadly March 25 order forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients, and not in stonewalling anyone looking to learn how many lives that mandate cost.

The latest is its laughable excuse for dodging a Freedom of Information Law request from the Empire Center, filed early last month. It sought the number of nursing-home residents who died of the coronavirus after being transferred to hospitals, numbers the state stopped releasing in May.

The department response this week: It can’t comply until at least Nov. 5, “because a diligent search for relevant documents is still being conducted.”

Bull. Health Commissioner Howard Zucker told state lawmakers Aug. 3 that he had the info — but wouldn’t share it because “I need to be sure it’s absolutely accurate.”

Zucker admits to more than 6,600 deaths in homes. Extrapolating from data from other states, the in-hospital figure will most likely double the total.

The Empire Center is appealing, noting how “implausible” the excuse is: The Health Department requires nursing homes to file fatality reports daily, including in-hospital deaths. How can it need two more months to come up with the data? Especially when Zucker told legislators at an Aug. 3 hearing that he was already working on it.

“If you die in the nursing home, it’s a nursing home death. If you die in the hospital, it’s called a hospital death,” Cuomo insists — though no other state that’s been a coronavirus hot-spot tallies deaths this way. Then again, the gov himself noted early on that the virus spreads in homes like “a fire through dry grass.”

Cuomo and Zucker still defend their March 25 mandate, though they rescinded it in May. But their refusal to tell the truth about its consequences tells you they know just how deadly it truly proved.