Anyone who wants to ask why did the state do that with COVID patients and nursing home, it’s because the state followed President Trump’s CDC guidance. So they should ask President Trump.–Governor Cuomo, May 21
My research indicates that Governor Cuomo is misrepresenting history.
Here is what the state mandated: No resident [of a nursing home] shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH [nursing home] 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.–New York directive
The text of the full directive has been purged from the New York State website, but that statement agrees with what was stated at Cuomo’s press conference on April 20:
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, to whom Cuomo referred the question, said that under the state’s policy, “if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home.”
Here is what the federal agency responsible for nursing homes actually said in memo on March 13. The guidelines were based on CDC directives:
When should a nursing home accept a resident who was diagnosed with COVID-19 from a hospital? A nursing home can accept a resident diagnosed with COVID-19 and still under Transmission Based Precautions for COVID-19 as long as the facility can follow CDC guidance for Transmission-Based Precautions. If a nursing home cannot, it must wait until these precautions are discontinued. (italics added)
New York required nursing homes to take patients who had the COVID-19 virus, and Cuomo is trying to say that was a federal requirement. Instead the federal directive said that nursing homes are allowed to take positive patients if they could take the proper precautions, otherwise they must not accept them. The difference is those words may well have cost thousands of lives in New York regardless of how Governor Cuomo tries to spin it.
Yes. Cuomo is definitely trying to pin the problems on Trump.
To be fair to Governor Cuomo, this tragedy appears to be an honest mistake. The state underestimated how contagious the disease is, and they were afraid that hospitals would be overwhelmed by the epidemic.
That is not what Cuomo’s Health Commissioner said on April 20 as shown in the video clip from the New York Post link:
. . .if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home. The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there.
I assume that New York has revised the order, but the original order did not give the nursing homes the option of refusing patients who tested positive even if they were ill-equipped to isolate cases and to protect workers. The result was an epidemic with thousands of deaths from patients and staff.
Are you sure? I’m positive I heard in those same updates that nursing homes that couldn’t accommodate patients were required to contact the department of health so that they could be moved to another location.
Yes it did but there was a very clear example of what to expect when a nursing home in Washington, very early on, became infected. It was THE WAKE UP CALL to all who were responsible for nursing homes across the country. I’m not nearly as forgiving as yourself because I do not like bull feces excuses when there was evidence strongly suggesting a particular type of problem was coming. Those that were responsible for making decisions regarding the health and welfare of their residents should have implemented measures to protect them immediately. All that did not heed this are responsible and should be investigated for what actions they took and put in place.
