New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dismissed criticisms of his coronavirus response and said he sleeps at night knowing he saved lives.
During a conference call with Orthodox Jewish leaders on Wednesday, the Democrat said that enforcement of his coronavirus policies is vital to keeping the pandemic in check. He urged local leaders to enforce a mandatory mask policy rather than giving out warnings.
“Assign a number of your police to a task force,” Cuomo said. “I will do it in my name, and you can blame me. I have no problem with that.”
“I put my head on the pillow at night saying I saved lives. That’s how I sleep at night. And I know we have,” Cuomo continued.
“Incompetent, ineffective government will cost lives,” he later added. “We’ve seen it from Trump. He has cost lives. Why does this nation lose more people than any nation on the globe? Because we have an incompetent federal government.”
A reporter on the call pushed back on Cuomo’s claims and noted that a nursing home policy implemented by his office early in the pandemic, which was later reversed and scrubbed from a state website, has been cited by critics as a deadly folly. Cuomo denied that his policy to send patients who tested positive for COVID-19 back to nursing homes was the cause of more deaths.
“That’s not why they lost a loved one in a nursing home. Your question, the premise of your question, is just factually wrong. People who were lost in nursing homes were lost because that’s where the virus preys. The virus preys on senior citizens,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo noted that New York has one of the lowest reported coronavirus death rates in nursing homes. Although the governor has repeatedly touted that statistic, New York has been widely criticized for only reporting deaths that took place in a nursing home and not including deaths of nursing home residents who were transported to hospitals in their final days.
A New York lawmaker filed a lawsuit earlier this week to get more data on the actual number of nursing home residents who died from the virus. New York is still second only to New Jersey in the number of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
