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The Cuomo administration largely ignored calls from a county official for COVID-19 testing for nursing homes at the height of the pandemic last spring – even as the governor reportedly ensured then scarce testing for loved ones , The Post learned.
Mild is the latest drop in the response to the Cuomo pandemic, particularly with regard to nursing homes, where thousands of residents have died from confirmed or suspected cases of the coronavirus.
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Troubled by reports of COVID-19 passing through nursing homes at the start of the pandemic, Jack Wheeler, the director of Steuben County in the upstate, asked in April 2020 that the department of The State of Health provides sufficient testing for each resident and staff member at three facilities within its jurisdiction.
The DOH, however, provided only enough supplies for one of the three facilities, Hornell Gardens, with the valuable diagnostic tests then hard to find, Wheeler told the Post.
That lackluster response came, as The Albany Times-Union reported last week, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo reportedly pulled the strings to get tests for bigwigs linked to his administration, as well as relatives, including her brother, CNN host Chris Cuomo, and their elderly mother. , Matilda.
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“I am furious because testing the most vulnerable population should be the top priority and just a request,” Wheeler told the Post. “But [that] high profile, connected people had that luxury when we couldn’t even get people tested in nursing homes, it’s just maddening. “
Instead, Wheeler said he should seek help from Steve Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, to find tests for a second facility, Elderwood in Hornell. .
Acquario embarked on an eight-hour drive through several neighboring counties in search of alternative tests to make ends meet.
“I knew where there might be additional test kits in the counties where they could afford to spare them, so I met with them to pick up the kits at various depots,” Acquario told the Post. “[Wheeler] and his county attorney contacted me with desperation and despair. They were really in crisis. “
“It was up to eight hours of driving, and I would be doing it again in the blink of an eye.”
Darlene Smith, director of health for Steuben County, meanwhile worked to get tests for the third facility, the Fred & Harriett Taylor Health Center.
The request for testing for this facility was initially approved by Dr Gregory Young, the DOH West Region Coordinator.
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But at 6:30 a.m. on April 10 – the day the tests were scheduled to take place – Young called to say “decisions were being made in Albany,” according to Smith.
“I knew then that was absolutely not going to happen,” Smith told The Post.
As with Elderwood in Hornell, local officials were eventually able to muster enough tests for the testing effort at the Fred & Harriett Taylor Health Center, but only after they neglected.
“These nursing homes were raging with positive cases and deaths and the purpose of universal resident and staff swabbing was to identify positive cases, isolate positive staff and … bring residents together. positive to avoid further spread, ”Smith said.
“We basically had to beg, borrow and steal and we were able to get test kits from other countries,” she continued. “Now knowing [that] what limited amount there was was now hoarded for friends and family – it’s criminal. It’s really hard to understand. “
A spokesperson for Cuomo denied the claims of preferential treatment made by The Times-Union, calling them “insincere efforts to rewrite the past.”
The DOH also said on Sunday that Wheeler’s account was an attempt at revisionist history.
“In the absence of any real federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York State has stepped forward and done everything in its power to protect our most vulnerable population,” said said spokesperson Jonah Bruno. “Anyone can try to rewrite history or rewrite conversations out of context a year later, but that doesn’t change the facts.
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“New York State has created the world’s best testing infrastructure, which has tested every resident in each of the state’s 613 nursing homes as of the first week of June, and continues to support home staff. nursing and, more recently, visitor testing, providing additional facilities. over 1.1 million rapid tests. “
The preferential treatment allegations will be part of an ongoing impeachment inquiry against Cuomo – initially launched amid allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct filed by several women.
Additionally, State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Lockport) has filed a formal ethics complaint over the allegation.
Emails obtained by The Post via the Freedom of Information Act show that Steuben County was not the only jurisdiction to deny a request for stricter testing in nursing homes.
In mid-April 2020, Onondaga County officials drafted a draft emergency order that would give them the power to require testing of employees at nursing homes in the county.
They submitted the proposed order to DOH officials for approval on April 15 – and received a response rejecting it the next day, without an explicit explanation for the decision, emails obtained by The Post show.
Less than a month later, however, on May 10, Cuomo demanded that all nursing home staff across the state receive diagnostic tests twice a week.
The governor passed on the directive as he quietly issued a partial annulment of an infamous March 25 mandate banning nursing homes from refusing residents based solely on a coronavirus diagnosis.
The March order, which took effect even as Cuomo publicly acknowledged the threat of COVID-19 to seniors, continued the governor throughout the pandemic.
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The administration’s accounting for the extremely high death toll in nursing homes is also in question.
A damning report released in January by state attorney general Letitia James found that the administration may have underestimated the number of coronavirus deaths among nursing home residents by 50%.
And the following month, Melissa DeRosa, one of Cuomo’s best assistants, was caught on an audio recording admitting to top Democrats that the administration had obscured the real toll because it feared a federal investigation.
This report originally appeared in the New York Post.
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