New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that her predecessor and grandma-killer Andrew Cuomo underreported COVID-19 deaths in the state to the public by nearly 12,000.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that approximately 55,400 New Yorkers have died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic but under Cuomo’s administration, roughly only 43,400 were publicized as of this week when the disgraced governor left office.
These deaths only counted people who died of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities. Anyone who died from the virus at home, in hospice care, in state prisons, or in state-run facilities for people with disabilities — or was merely presumed to have died from COVID-19 — was excluded from the total announced daily by the former governor’s office.
“That lower number favored by the Cuomo administration still appeared in the daily update put out by Hochul’s office Tuesday, but with an explanation about why it was an incomplete count,” ABC7 reported.
“There are presumed and confirmed deaths. People should know both,” Hochul said on Wednesday. “Also, as of yesterday, we’re using CDC numbers, which will be consistent. And so there’s no opportunity for us to mask those numbers, nor do I want to mask those numbers. The public deserves a clear, honest picture of what’s happening. And that’s whether it’s good or bad, they need to know the truth. And that’s how we restore confidence.”
While Cuomo was in office, the New York attorney general’s office exposed him for lying about the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 due to a policy that sent infected patients into care facilities during the pandemic. Not only did state Attorney General Letitia James find that the state’s health department severely undercounted the number of COVID-related deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50 percent, she also found that Cuomo and his administration covered up these numbers.
In an interview on Wednesday about Cuomo’s prolonged coverup, Hochul promised that “transparency will be the hallmark of my administration.”
“We’re now releasing more data than had been released before publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what’s being displayed by the CDC,” Hochul said. “There’s a lot of things that weren’t happening and I’m going to make them happen.”
