30 August 2021: Lawmakers Want to Learn What Role SUNY Chancellor Malatras' Had in Drafting Misleading NYDOH Report

Kathy Hochul urged to release James Malatras’ nursing home records

With sexual harassment allegations moving to federal, state, and local criminal investigations, New York officials are turning their attention back toward the Cuomo administration's doctoring of the 6 July 2020 NYDOH report, which concealed the full extent of COVID deaths among New York nursing home residents during the period its deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Gov. Kathy Hochul should publicly release all records regarding SUNY Chancellor James Malatras’ role in preparing a discredited state Health Department report that covered up the true extent of coronavirus deaths in nursing homes, lawmakers said Monday....

“To move forward as a state, we need a full accounting of the disastrous nursing home policies of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, which allegedly lead to thousands of needless deaths,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden said in a letter to Hochul provided to The Post.

“I urge you to make public all records pertaining to the role James Malatras played in handling the New York State Health Department July report that we now know was altered to underreport nursing home deaths,” he said....

In March, Malatras acknowledged he helped edit the Health Department’s nursing home report but denied any role in changing data to cover up the state’s true nursing home death toll from the coronavirus.

“As with many reports, there were back and forth with structure, citations and other language during the process, but to be clear, I included the fatalities data provided by the New York State Department of Health which I did not alter and change,” Malatras said at the time.

Malatras repeated his assertion during an interview with The Post on Sunday saying, “I absolutely did not alter the numbers.”

In the letter, Holden acknowledged that Malatras claimed he wasn’t the culprit in manipulating data. But releasing the Malatras records should reveal who was, he said.

Hochul would do well to continue the strong start she has made in reversing the Cuomo administration's policies of opaqueness and obstruction by making all the related staff records available to the public.