Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Tuesday defended his handling of nursing homes as he arrived for an interview before a House GOP committee probing his COVID-19 response.
“Look, all across the nation, the nursing homes were the places of tremendous tragedy and loss. At one time in this country, 50% of the deaths were in nursing homes. So, it was a national tragedy. And that's what we have to learn from,” Cuomo said, after a reporter asked him if he felt any remorse. “New York performed very well, given the circumstances.”
Cuomo has faced backlash for his administration's instruction to nursing homes in the early days of the pandemic to accept residents recovering from the coronavirus after they were discharged from hospitals, which critics argued led to more deaths in nursing homes. The administration was also hammered for allegedly misreporting the overall number of COVID-19-related deaths at New York nursing homes.
The former governor contrasted New York’s death rate in nursing homes to other states and argued the numbers “vindicated everything New Yorkers did” in response to the pandemic.
“They isolated, they followed the science, the first responders were masterful, and that's what the facts show. Forget the political spin. These are facts,” Cuomo said.
