Andrew Cuomo agrees to testify to Congress on Covid nursing home debacle

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has agreed to testify before Congress about his administration’s controversial handling of New York nursing homes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Governor Cuomo will be appearing before our select Subcommittee on the Pandemic on June 11,” Rep Brad Wenstrup, the Ohio Republican who chairs the panel, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday. “This will be a transcribed interview at 10am.”

The former Democratic governor will be asked by the panel of lawmakers about his March 2020 advisory, which barred nursing homes in New York from rejecting patients solely on the basis of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

“I’m trying to learn why he would do something like this,” Mr Wenstrup said.

“As a doctor who has treated infections, it goes against all medical common sense to take someone who was highly contagious and put them amongst the most vulnerable.”

In 2021, an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the New York State Department of Health undercounted COVID-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes by approximately 50 per cent.

The health department failed to report roughly 4,100 deaths between April 2020 and February 2021, according to a 2022 audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

However, Mr Cuomo has insisted that the advisory was consistent with guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CNN reported.

When pressed by Jake Tapper Friday about an alleged cover-up, Mr Wenstrup responded, “Well, he’s going to have the opportunity to deny that again and take a look at what some of the other people are saying actually took place and whether it was intentional to play those numbers down or whether it was just miscounting.”

Last month, Mr Cuomo was sent a subpoena to testify along with a letter in which Mr Wenstrup alleged that the “misguided decision effectively admitted thousands of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing predictable but deadly consequences for New York’s most vulnerable.”

In this October 2020 photo, families of COVID-19 victims who passed away in New York nursing homes gather in front of the Cobble Hill Heath Center to demand that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo apologize for his response to the coronavirus in nursing homes during the pandemic (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

The agreement comes roughly nine months after the panel began contacting Mr Cuomo, according to Mr Wenstrup, who said the panel was “ignored on many of our requests, there were delays.”

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Mr Cuomo, told CNN,  “There’s no news here, we agreed to do this months ago.”

As part of the agreement, Mr Cuomo will do a transcribed interview instead of a deposition.

Mr Cuomo resigned in 2021 after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a damning report that the former governor had sexually harassed state employees and others outside of government, citing 11 women in the report.

Mr Cuomo has denied the allegations.

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