by Mary Rose Corkery
Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s orders sent more than 6,300 coronavirus patients to nursing homes at the height of the pandemic, new numbers from state officials show.
Thousands of elderly coronavirus patients died after Cuomo issued an order March 25 mandating assisted-living facilities admit coronavirus patients, and state officials are now reporting that the number of admitted carriers is even higher than previous estimates.
”The data shows that the nursing home residents got COVID from the staff, and presumably, also from those who visited them. Unfortunately, we did not understand the disease early on, we did not realize how widespread it was within our community, and therefore, it was able to be introduced into a vulnerable population,” New York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said in a press release.
More than 20,000 nursing home staffers were infected in March and April, the Associated Press reported.
“As best as we could, using the tools that we have, we looked to determine the relationships between timelines and outcomes, between infectivity and symptomatology, between onset of illness and death. We looked at the facts,” Zucker said.
Cuomo retracted the order May 10 after he was criticized for causing New York’s high death rate in nursing homes. Cuomo has repeatedly blamed the federal government and President Donald Trump for the death rate in the nursing homes.
Cuomo’s office and the New York State Department of Health did not respond immediately to the Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.
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Mary Rose Corkery is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
