Now that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running for mayor of New York City, it is not surprising that information becomes politicized and false claims and mischaracterizations about his administration’s nursing home policies during the pandemic are resurfacing. As Cuomo said repeatedly, every COVID-19 death was a tragedy, but unfortunately that pain has been weaponized for political purposes and facts are distorted in the process.
The central political charge made against the Cuomo administration is that the March 25, 2020 Department of Health advisory, which stated that, “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the nursing home solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” significantly contributed to nursing home deaths. Similar guidance was issued by 11 other states — with both Democratic and Republican governors.
Although much is made of minor semantic differences among these guidance documents, the Department of Justice inspector general found that all of these directives were “largely consistent with federal guidance” and the state Attorney General Letitia James, in her report in January 2021, stated explicitly that the March 25 advisory was consistent with federal CDC guidance.
The accusation that these transfers significantly contributed to nursing home deaths is refuted by several official reports. The After-Action Report on COVID-19 commissioned by Gov. Hochul and released in June 2024 said that New York’s nursing home policies during the pandemic were “consistent with universal best practices in congregate care and accurately reflected the best understanding of the scientific community at the time they were issued.”
And the Assembly Impeachment Investigation Report issued in November 2021 that said: “We note that our investigation did not uncover evidence to suggest that the March 25, 2020 directive … increased the number of COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes.”
Moreover, the Empire Center, a think tank in Albany, found no statistically significant correlation in downstate nursing homes (where the bulk of the nursing home cases were) between admissions of COVID-19 patients from hospitals to nursing homes and deaths of nursing home residents. The final report of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic simply asserted that the March 25 advisory caused “excess deaths,” but provided no empirical evidence — none — for this conclusion.
There are two fundamental reasons for this lack of connection between transfers and nursing home deaths. First, COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals to nursing homes were believed to no longer be infectious, given that the discharges were made after the length of time that the scientific evidence suggests patients remained contagious.
Second, all but six nursing homes in New York (out of more than 600) already had a confirmed COVID-19 case among a resident or staff member at the time of the first admission of a COVID-19 patient from a hospital.
The second talking point used against Cuomo is that he “covered up” the number of nursing home deaths by not including deaths of nursing home residents that occurred in hospitals. However, the state always recorded deaths by “place of death” and the total number of deaths (including both deaths in nursing homes and hospitals) was always accurate and would not have been affected by re-allocating some deaths as being considered “nursing home deaths.”
Moreover, the Cuomo administration’s concerns that inaccuracies that might have arisen from seeking to determine in real-time reporting which deaths in hospitals were of nursing home residents would be seized upon for political purposes was validated by the Department of Justice inspector general’s 53-page report released this past January.
The IG describes in minute detail the efforts of certain DOJ officials with “partisan political motivations” to plant a story in the press days before the 2020 election which they believed would be damaging to the Democratic governors of New York and New Jersey.
Furthermore, the Department of Justice led three separate investigations, as well as the Manhattan district attorney into COVID deaths in nursing homes, all closing their cases as a result of no evidence of wrongdoing. Civil cases brought on the same topic have been dismissed as well.
All of these facts can be verified from the public record. Statements that insinuate that Cuomo was responsible for unnecessary nursing home deaths in New York are demonstrably false and are clearly being made simply for cynical political purposes.
At a time in our country when the truth is under unprecedented assault, it is important to remember the words of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Francis is the chairman of the Step Two Policy Project. He served as Cuomo’s deputy secretary for Health and Human Services from 2015 to 2020.