Early on in the Covid19 outbreak NY Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order barring older patients from being refused entry into nursing homes based on suspected Covid19 statuses.
The directives included the following inexplicable requirements:
During this global health emergency, all NHs [nursing homes] must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs.
No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.
The results of these policies were disastrous.
There are about 30,000 overall deaths in NY state due to Covid19. About 20% of them have been estimated to have taken place in nursing homes.
The numbers are bad enough, but nursing home staff say they are also being suppressed, and that NY state government is covering the real numbers up to prevent the real extent of the damaging effects of the policy from being known.
Now it seems Cuomo’s administration is further blocking the truth from coming out.
A week ago the Department of Justice announced that it has requested data from four Democrat governors on their orders to send sick Covid19 patients to nursing homes.
The Cuomo administration responded to this, and other requests for data, by saying the information would be provided no sooner than November 5 – three months after the original request date – and possibly even later than that.
The architects of the policy are New York State’s Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Executive Deputy Commissioner Sally Dreslin. Zucker was once the highest-ranking American in the World Health Organization (WHO).