New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to accusations that his administration undercounted nursing home deaths from COVID-19 by laying the blame on the Trump administration.
“Where this starts, is, frankly, a political attack from the prior federal administration and HHS and their great spokesman Michael Caputo, who was a protégé of Roger Stone,” Cuomo said at a press conference Friday.
Cuomo was forced to address the issue after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report Thursday, claiming that the New York Department of Health had been undercounting nursing home deaths in the state “by approximately 50 percent.”
Caputo, who was assistant secretary of public affairs for the Health and Human Services Department under President Donald Trump, criticized Cuomo in August for signing an executive order requiring nursing homes to accept residents who had been discharged from the hospital after being hospitalized for COVID-19. Critics contend the policy put nursing home residents at risk. Cuomo rescinded the order in May.
Caputo fired back Friday, saying, “Cuomo is personally responsible for thousands of unnecessary nursing home deaths, and he must be held accountable.”
The attorney general’s report suggests that nursing home deaths are undercounted because the Department of Health under Cuomo only counted deaths that occurred in nursing homes and excluded the deaths of residents who were transferred to a hospital.
Of the 62 nursing homes examined by the attorney general, 55 nursing homes had discrepancies in their data. The Department of Health reported 1,229 COVID-19 deaths related to those facilities, but the attorney general found 1,914, a difference of 55%.
