29 March 2021: NY DOH Director Howard Zucker and Cuomo Defender Beth Garvey Get Nasty on Call with Nursing Homes

Top Cuomo officials ‘threatened’ nursing home reps during heated call about COVID vaccines

This report details how Howard Zucker, the stonewalling director of New York's Departhment of Health and Governor Cuomo's chief legal defender used threats of fines and the revoking of operating licenses to put pressure on nursing home operators. But as you'll see, they didn't exactly have their facts right:

Two members of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s inner circle threatened nursing-home association representatives with fines and license revocations during a heated, emergency call about COVID-19 vaccinations — even though it was based on erroneous information, sources on the call told The Post.

The call, held earlier this month, came as Cuomo has faced continuing scrutiny over his response to the health crisis in nursing homes, as well as allegations that he fosters a toxic work environment where bullying behavior permeates the upper ranks.

State Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Beth Garvey, special counsel to the governor, used the call to threaten nursing home operators for failing to pick up vaccine shipments they supposedly ordered — only for it to emerge that their gripes were based on inaccurate information, according to sources on the call.

“Why the over-the-top threatening? Why wasn’t it a phone call of ‘what are you guys hearing and are there issues getting the vaccine out?'” said one source. “You call people up with no notice, start threatening licenses and penalties — that’s your starting position? The first I heard something was wrong was on that call. Before that? Nothing.”

The report contains excerpts of audio recorded during Zucker and Garvey's call, in which they tag teamed on delivering threats. Here's Howard Zucker applying pressure:

“What are my options here?” asked Zucker, according to audio of a 26-minute portion of the call obtained by The Post. “There’s the option of fines. There’s the option of enforcement. There’s the option of shaming everyone and saying, ‘I can’t believe the people aren’t doing this.’

And here's Beth Garvey in action:

“It is absolute malpractice to have these vaccines available and have not picked them up,” she said. “I would think that each and every medical director at these facilities should feel personal jeopardy for their medical licenses. We obviously have tools at our disposal.

“Every option is on the table, as far as issuing emergency regs, issuing fines and penalties,” she continued. “We have literally bent over backwards to try to see if the nursing homes would do the right thing. I think our only recourse at this point is to try to clean it up, because we have liability.”

The call provides a window into the Cuomo administration's toxic culture, which explains why nursing home operators were more petrified of the DOH than COVID during the period when the administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.