15 April 2021: NY DOH Surveyor Exposed Nursing Home to COVID

NY Health Department surveyor potentially exposes NYC nursing home to COVID-19, source reveals

This report specifically covers an incident from 5 April 2021, but could just as easily have taken place at any time during the preceding year. The situation is describes relates the practices of New York Department of Health officials who have had direct interaction with nursing homes throughout the coronavirus pandemic:

A New York Department of Health surveyor auditing a Bronx nursing home last week exposed residents and staff to COVID-19, a source told Fox News.

According to an employee at Pelham Parkway Nursing Home, a team of health department surveyors began auditing the facility on April 5. While department guidance "strongly encourages" all visitors be tested before entering a nursing home facility in New York, the source said surveyors declined testing on-site. Four days later, nursing home staff were told one surveyor had tested positive with COVID and was quarantined.

While the surveyors were working together in the building, the other staff members did not quarantine and continued working within the building, the source said.

State health department officials said its staff surveyors are tested twice weekly and were rapid tested offsite – and negative – on April 7, their last day visiting the facility. Also, all the surveyors were cleared after the facility performed a temparature screening when they arrived and they worse surgical masks and face shields while on site, officials said.

Despite the precautions, one surveyor began experiencing symptoms on April 7 and went to get a PCR test that came back positive, state health officials said. The health department alerted the facility the next day and contact tracing was conducted immediately....

The source expressed frustration that the health department appears to be playing by a different set of rules, alleging that surveyors do not need to show proof of a negative COVID test before entering the facilities. Also, staff would have liked the department to have immediately deployed a new team to replace the one that had been exposed.

At the time of this incident, the NY DOH's COVID practices for its surveyors are well established. As are the more rigorous practices nursing homes have adopted to prevent the introduction and spread of COVID within their facilities. One year ago, that was far from the case. One year ago, Cuomo administration DOH officials purposefully introduced patients infected with COVID into New York's nursing homes, without any of these practices in place. What do you suppose happened next?

The Cuomo administration's DOH employees still haven't learned what they need to from that highly fatal mistake. But then, many of these officials collaborated in covering up the full extent of that fatal error. Remember, there were people at the NY DOH who knew what data senior Cuomo officials doctored in its 6 July 2020 report, but kept silent rather that step forward with their accounts of how the Cuomo administration corrupted the DOH's report of NY nursing home deaths.

This is a very good illustration of what we mean when we say it took a lot of teamwork for the Cuomo administration to implement, enforce, and ultimately, to cover up the consequences of its deadly 25 March 2020 directive.