As Cuomo searched for $ 4million book, Aides hid a damaging death toll

As for the involvement of junior assistants in book-related tasks, he said: “Every effort has been made to ensure that no state resources are used on this project.”

“As long as an assistant printed a document,” he said, “it seems coincidental.”

Ms DeRosa also made an important contribution to the July 6 report released by the Department of Health, which essentially blamed Mr Cuomo’s administration for its management of nursing homes – dismissing the impact of ‘a state note from March 2020 which asked these establishments to welcome or readmit residents who had tested positive for the disease.

Critical changes were made to the final version of the Department of Health report, after Ms DeRosa and a second Cuomo assistant, Linda Lacewell, raised concerns about the data, according to interviews and documents.

In two earlier versions of the report, both of which were reviewed by The Times, the second sentence read that “From March 1, 2020 to June 10, 2020, there were 9,844 deaths among residents of New York City nursing homes with a COVID-19 confirmed or suspected. . “

The first drafts were written by Eleanor Adams, a senior epidemiologist, and Jim Malatras, a former Cuomo aide who is now system chancellor at State University of New York. The total of 9,844 deaths was much higher than the 6,432 nursing home deaths used in the state’s final report, which continued state practices of omitting deaths of nursing home residents. nurses who died in hospital.

Mr Azzopardi said the July 6 report was intended to examine whether administration policies “have contributed to an increase in deaths and not full accounting” of all nursing home residents who have died. He added that the report had since been updated to include most “out of custody” deaths. This did not change the overall conclusions of the report, he said.

Mr Cuomo, 63, declined to confirm exactly how much he was paid for “American Crisis,” which was released by Crown Publishing Group in mid-October, just as a second wave of coronavirus began to swell in New York.