Top Cuomo Aide Admits State Withheld Nursing Home Deaths: Reports

NEW YORK CITY — Private remarks by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide prompted a renewed political furor over whether the state covered up nursing home deaths.

Melissa DeRosa told Democratic lawmakers during a video call that the state denied a legislative request for coronavirus-related nursing home death numbers amid fears the Trump administration would use them as a “giant political football,” the New York Post first reported.

DeRosa said “basically, we froze” in releasing nursing home deaths as Trump’s Department of Justice requested information, the Post report states.

“Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” DeRosa said, according to the Post.

Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes in the coronavirus pandemic early days has been a politically-charged issue. The full number of deaths — 12,743 — wasn’t publicly released until after a blistering report by state Attorney General Letitia James found they potentially had been undercounted by 50 percent.

Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, revealed the number while denying an undercount. He said instead nearly 4,000 nursing home residents’ deaths were counted as fatalities in hospitals because they died in those facilities.

Republicans and some Democrats leapt on DeRosa’s comments as reported by the New York Post.

DeRosa, for her part, told the New York Times that her remarks to lawmakers tried to explain the delay in fulfilling their request. She said the state needed to fulfill the federal request first.

“As I said on a call with legislators, we could not fulfill their request as quickly as anyone would have liked,” she told the Times.

Read the New York Post story here.