Select Subcommittee On Coronavirus Pandemic With Fmr. NY Governor Andrew Cuomo Re Nursing Homes Executive Order Which Increased Death Toll

Remarks From Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic With Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

Editor’s note: We previously covered the comments from Rep. Malliotakis on the dangerous gain-of-function research conducted in Wuhan by EcoHealth Alliance, whose head doctor was just debarred by NIH. 

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis questioned former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing regarding the role of his March 25 directive to admit COVID-positive patients to nursing homes, which contributed to thousands of deaths during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’ remarks from today’s hearing are as follows.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Governor Cuomo, I planned to ask you a series of questions, but after reading your opinion piece in Sunday’s Daily News, and hearing your testimony here today, I will use my time to correct the half-truths and lies that insult New Yorkers.

You cite CMS data to claim New York had the 12th lowest death rate by the end of 2020. However, CMS began collecting data in mid-May, so the deaths when your deadly directive was in full force were not included. Your administration reported 6,000 deaths. The true toll was 11,400… nearly double.

You assert your March 25 directive never mandated nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients. This is FALSE: your directive said, “No resident shall be denied,” and it prohibited COVID testing before admission.

You then try to claim the Directive mirrored CDC guidelines. This is also FALSE. Both CMS and CDC used permissive language like “can” and “should,” not “shall” and “must.” Their guidelines made clear that positive patients should only be admitted if facilities could isolate. Former CMS Administrator Seema Verma and former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx both testified that your actions violated those guidelines.

CDC and CMS would never recommend prohibiting testing. Yet your directive did.

All while you were sending tests to the Hamptons for your family.

You also falsely claim this directive was the standard across the country, even trying to hide behind Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s directive, when Minnesota’s guidance actually included caveats, precautions, and didn’t prevent nursing homes from testing patients like your directive did.

You’ve claimed that the March 25 directive was to protect hospital capacity, but the USNS Comfort and the Javits Center were deployed for overflow but remained underutilized.

You said that nursing homes could still have denied entry to those they could not safely care for under existing state law, but you suspended that very regulation in a March 7, 2020 executive order, stripping nursing homes of that ability to deny admission.

On top of all that, you insist New York didn’t undercount nursing home deaths, yet your Chief of Staff directed that the deaths of nursing home residents outside the facility not be counted and later admitted the true toll was withheld to avoid attracting prosecutors. That, Governor Cuomo, is a cover-up.

You’ve tried to blame everyone including CDC, CMS, nursing home operators, NH staff, an unidentified low-level DOH staffer, and, of course, President Trump. But the buck stops with you. You testified that you don’t know who signed off on the March 25 Directive and your DOH Commissioner did not either, despite both your names being on the letterhead.

In the closed-door testimony, both you and your Chief of Staff told the committee it was some “mid-level” staffer at the Department of Health. Both the commissioner and deputy commissioner of health said the executive chamber approved it. You did not have a name on June 11th – do you have one today? Who signed off on this directive? Was it you? Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul? Your Chief of Staff, Melissa DeRosa? Or was it the Communist Chinese spy Linda Sun?

I find it hard to believe that you, the Governor of New York, a known micromanager who did a briefing every day for 111 straight days, did not know this directive with such consequences went out with your name at the top, and that you didn’t get to the bottom of who did, after all the media attention, public scrutiny and deaths that resulted.

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A) Why didn’t you reverse the directive and use the alternative facilities like Javitz and South Beach Psych in Staten Island?

B) On June 11, you told us that you would approve the directive today, knowing what you know now, and the number of deaths that resulted.

You’ve shown no empathy, no remorse, no responsibility for the actions of your administration, and that is NOT leadership.

It seems your Lieutenant and successor, Governor Kathy Hochul, is just as determined to hide the truth from New Yorkers as you were. In her very first speech as Governor, she promised transparency, including the release of documents related to nursing homes and the pandemic. Yet, to this day, she has not fulfilled that promise and continues to stonewall this committee.

You can view the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s hearing HERE.