16 June 2021: NYS Bar Association: Cuomo Directive Contributed to COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Cuomo nursing home order did cause more deaths, should’ve been reversed sooner: task force

A 16 member task force assembled by the New York State Bar Association has determined the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive expanded the death toll from COVID among New York nursing home residents. The directive forced nursing homes to admit COVID patients being discharged from hospitals to free up hospital bed space without any testing to determine if they were still contagious.

Here's the introduction to an article well worth clicking through to read the whole thing:

The controversial directive for New York nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients increased the death toll among residents — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s claims otherwise have been disproven, according to a New York State Bar Association report exclusively obtained by The Post.

The 242-page report by the NYSBA’s Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care also blasts Cuomo for not reversing the Department of Health’s “unreasonable” mandate sooner than he did, saying it remained in effect weeks longer than necessary.

“Although a determination of the number of additional nursing home deaths is beyond the capacity of the Task Force, there are credible reviews that suggest that the directive, for the approximately six weeks that it was in effect, did lead to some number of additional deaths,” the report says.

The non-partisan Empire Center for Public Policy estimated the number of excess COVID deaths resulting from the Cuomo administration's deadly directive could exceed 1,000.

The article also contains this reaction from Assemblyman Ron Kim:

Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens) said Tuesday that he suspected the NYSBA report would be “the beginning of many other reports that will come to prove the deadly impact of the March 25 order.”

“The window of being truthful and asking for forgiveness is gone,” said Kim, whose uncle died in a Queens nursing home after suffering symptoms of COVID-19.

“I think there was a small window early on where they could have admitted their mistake and asked for forgiveness but now they have tripled down on their lies amid cover-ups, where if they admit the truth, they admit to acting criminally.”

The task force's 242 page report became public after Governor Cuomo celebrated lifting New York's COVID lockdown restrictions on 15 June 2021 without ever acknowledging New York experienced any COVID deaths.