Cuomo Blames Trump Admin., Michael Caputo for Nursing Home Deaths Report: ‘A Political Attack’
UNKNOWN FEMALE: “Chris, your line is now open, please unmute your microphone.”
REPORTER: “Good afternoon, Governor. Why should it take a report from the attorney general for the state to release the number of nursing home residents who died in a hospital, which is a number that we’ve been looking for quite a while.”
CUOMO: “Let me ask Dr. Zucker first to respond to that.
ZUCKER: “Sure. Thank — thank you Governor. There — there are a few key points here that I’d like to make, which is that you know, we’ve always been transparent on the number of nursing home deaths that were reported in the facility. We’ve always had those in the facility, deaths. And we’ve also said that there have been hospital deaths. Back in August we said that we would get the legislature the number and we working on that, particularly in anticipation of a my budget hearing, which is coming up next month. But when — when I saw the attorney general report decided that we need to finish it up quickly and get these numbers out in real time. The other key point — this is a very important to emphasize — is that the total number of deaths does not change. That number has not changed. And — and we put that down. To misrepresent that number actually is factually inaccurate. And so in the report when — when I saw that — that was there, I said that that — when they said there was under county that’s just factually inaccurate. We want to get that out. And governor as we — as you have said on all of these presentations reporting the number of deaths is always the hardest number to report out there. And we wanted to be sure that that those numbers were accurate. Thank you.”
CUOMO: “Yeah. Well, just — also for the remember the context here. The report affirmed everything that commissioner said. Where this starts is frankly a political attack from prior federal administration HHS. Their great spokesperson, Michael Caputo, who is Roger Stone protege who said we had more nursing home deaths in New York because of something that the State Health Department did. This report affirms everything the commissioner said for the past year. The State Department of Health followed federal guidance by CMS and CDC. Commissioner said no not for profit, nursing home was forced to take any one. Report confirms that. If they took a person who was not — who they could not care for, a Covid positive person they violated the law. The report says that. And the Department of Health only counted the number of deaths in hospitals and the number of deaths in nursing homes, released that number. That number stays the same. Well, how about people who were in, people who were transferred from hospital back to a nursing home? That number the department was correlating, because you have to get that from the nursing homes and the report also says the information from nursing homes is often incorrect. And that’s the number to date. But it’s an ongoing process. Next question.”
