Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) said Thursday on ABC’s “The View” that New York State’s more than 6,000 nursing home deaths allegedly caused by his order to put patients infected with coronavirus back in facilities was a conspiracy theory.
Co-host Sunny Hostin asked, “There has been a lot of confusion about an alleged March 25th order that directed nursing homes to accept in New York, infected COVID patients, possibly leading to the death of more than 6,000 seniors. Now you say in your book that that was a lie, that New York state never demanded or directed that any nursing home accept a COVID positive patient. The Department of Justice however is now supposedly looking into this issue. Can you explain what really happened?”
Cuomo said, “What a shock that the ‘Department of Injustice’ sends a letter a few days before an election trying to advance a political theory. I was shocked and amazed that the Trump administration was capable of such a thing. Sunny, they have played politics on this from day one, right? They have done a terrible job on Covid from day one, and they want a counter defense and what they were saying was, well, a lot of people died in nursing homes in Democratic states. It’s not just New York it’s all the Democratic states. The truth is a lot of people did die in nursing homes in Democratic states. The truth is people are dying today in nursing homes in Republican states. It’s just that Democratic states had the disease worse and earlier, and older people are more vulnerable to Covid, right? We were introduced to covid in the state of Washington in a nursing home.”
He continued, “If you look at how many people died in New York nursing homes, New York is number 46 out of 50 states in the percentage of deaths in nursing homes. The way the law works is no nursing home in New York can accept a patient if they don’t believe they can care for that patient adequately, and if they can do it within the safety of their facility.”
He added, “So the conspiracy they’re trying to spread just has no factual basis. But yes, people in nursing homes died, and they’re playing politics with the issue, which I think is especially cruel because people who lost loved ones in a nursing home, they’re dealing with it, and now they also have to deal with the confusion or the pain of maybe government did this.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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