Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continued to deflect blame over his administration’s controversial directive to ship contaminated COVID-19 sufferers into nursing properties — which resulted in hundreds of deaths — through the worst interval of the killer pandemic.
Throughout an interview with FOX 5 NY, Cuomo, who not too long ago entered the Huge Apple’s mayoral race, provided a half-baked apology to repeated questions in regards to the pandemic and didn’t assume accountability for the disastrous March 2020 determination that shuttled sick sufferers into senior care services statewide.
The disgraced pol, who resigned from the governor’s workplace in 2021 following a slew of scandals, as an alternative positioned fault on well being care specialists who he stated “did not know how many people were going to die.”
“COVID was a horrendous, once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. It focused on nursing homes, as you know, because that’s where COVID preyed the most,” Cuomo, 67, informed reporter Rosanna Scotto on the Rain Boston Highway Senior Middle within the Bronx Friday.
“Two million Americans died during COVID. Every one of them was a tragedy. People died in nursing homes in New York under the worst situations imaginable.”
When requested if he owed New Yorkers whose members of the family died inside nursing properties an apology, Cuomo responded: “I’m sorry for what they had to go through.”
“It was horrific,” he continued, including that he adopted the laws suggested by well being specialists.
“I get why the health department wanted these restrictions, but it was a terrible, terrible situation.”
Cuomo then questioned why it took the federal authorities so lengthy to create correct testing and vaccines to fight the virus, claiming the feds knew about COVID months earlier than it led to a nationwide shutdown.
He additionally touted New York’s low demise charge throughout that point and refuted accusations he misled the general public on the variety of nursing dwelling deaths, saying the subject was “very political and very weaponized.”
The ex-governor, who has repeatedly sidestepped questions concerning his dealing with of the well being disaster, got here below hearth following his devastating March 25, 2020, “must admit” order that noticed hundreds of recovering COVID sufferers admitted into the state’s nursing properties.
Critics have blamed the transfer for as many as 15,000 nursing dwelling deaths. Cuomo was additionally accused of undercounting the nursing dwelling demise toll by as a lot as 50%.
A rep for the mayoral hopeful doubled down on his determination to comply with federal coverage and steering within the early months of the pandemic.
“Five years later the facts are clear: according to the US DOJ IG, the New York State Attorney General and the Hochul administration’s after action report, New York’s nursing home admissions policy followed federal guidance, a dozen other blue and red states did as well, and, despite being hit first and worst, retrospective statistics show that New York fared better than all but 11 states pro rata in COVID nursing home fatalities,” Wealthy Azzopardi informed The Put up.
“Every single COVID death was a tragedy, but — as the DOJ IG reported — it’s reprehensible that peoples’ pain has been weaponized for political purposes.”
