Tedisco to Zucker: “Will You and Cuomo Apologize for Nursing Home Deaths at Long Last?”

Senator Jim Tedisco (R,C-Glenville), who has been one of the legislature’s most outspoken voices on the Cuomo Administration’s cover-up of the deaths of 15,000 New Yorkers from the coronavirus in state-regulated nursing homes, today confronted NYS Health Department Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker at a joint legislative budget hearing about accepting and apologizing for the Administration’s role in one of the most horrific tragedies in our state’s history.

“Judge Kimberly O’Connor made a judgment on a lawsuit the Empire Center and myself brought forth to get the real numbers as related to lives lost in our nursing homes – she deemed the Administration “violated the open government law. Those death numbers are what took close to 10 months to receive and were only made public a few weeks ago on the same day as the Attorney General pulled back the veil of secrecy from this Administration and released a report that said there was a 50 percent undercount of the total number of those who got the contagion in a nursing home and died there and those who got it and died in a hospital,” said Senator Jim Tedisco.

1)    “In light of the fact that 15,000 of our most vulnerable population who got this virus in a nursing home died.

2)    That on May 10^th, the March 25^th executive order expediting the placement of COVID-positive patients into nursing homes was basically changed to keep all nursing home patients out of our nursing homes if they tested positive for the coronavirus.

3)    And research by Bill Hammond from the Empire Center that recently showed through the Governor’s March 25^thexecutive order upward of 1,000 or more nursing home residents died because Covid-positive persons were placed from hospitals into nursing homes. For close to a year, you and the Administration have denied the March 25^thExecutive Order had any substantial impact as to what the Governor defined as a wild fire through dry grass.” 

“My question, Commissioner Zucker is: At long last, will you and the Cuomo Administration admit to your culpability in these deaths and finally issue an apology to the thousands of families impacted? Isn’t it time that you and the Governor finally apologize to all New Yorkers and the families of those who lost loved ones?” said Senator Tedisco.

“And if everything the Cuomo Administration did on the nursing homes was on the up and up, why has the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn recently opened up a criminal investigation on their handling of this cover-up?” said Senator Tedisco.

 Here’s a link to Tedisco’s remarks to Zucker and question as to whether, at long last will he and the Cuomo Administration apologize to the families of those who lost their lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2pIGzPfNFo&feature=youtu.be