Cuomo on nursing home coronavirus response: "Don't criticize the state for following the president's policy"

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Saturday doubled down on his state's now-scrapped nursing home policy that critics say contributed to thousands of coronavirus deaths and instead blamed the problem on President Trump and his administration.

"New York followed the president's agencies' guidance," Cuomo said Saturday at his press conference. ".... What New York did was follow what the Republican Administration said to do. That's not my attempt to politicize it. It's my attempt to depoliticize it. So don't criticize the state for following the president's policy."

The governor's office said New York's original nursing home policy was in line with a March 13 directive from the Trump Administration's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Centers from Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that went out to all states on how to control infections in nursing homes. The guidance says "nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present."

"Not could. Should," Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor and Cuomo's top aide, said at the Saturday press conference. "That is President Trump's CMS and CDC...There are over a dozen states that did the exact same thing."

Cuomo has been under scrutiny from GOP politicians who say the governor should have never allowed recovering coronavirus patients to leave hospitals and go back to their residential nursing homes to spread the contagious virus.

Nursing care facilities, home to some of the most vulnerable citizens, have been coronavirus hotspots around the country. New York leads the nation with the most reported coronavirus nursing home deaths at more than 5,000 -- though the state changed how it counts deaths so the numbers of nursing home patient deaths could be even higher.

Cuomo's response Saturday echoed his past answers, that he was only following guidelines from the Trump administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a political season, I get it,” Cuomo said Wednesday. “I’m not going to get into the political back-and-forth, but anyone who wants to ask why did the state do that with COVID patients in nursing homes, it’s because the state followed President Trump’s CDC guidance.”

Cuomo added: “They should ask President Trump. I think that will stop the conversation.”

A scathing Associated Press report out Friday was highly critical of the way in which Cuomo had handled the state’s nursing home coronavirus crisis. It found more than 4,300 c... (Read more)

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