Cuomo personally altered COVID nursing-home death report that low-balled fatalities, emails show: report

Former Gov.Andrew Cuomo personally altered a state review that low-balled the nursing-home COVID-19 death count by more than 50%, according to emails detailed in a new report.Emails and congressional documents undercut Cuomo’s defiant assertion during a summer congressional grilling that he never saw or even had any memory of the State Health Department report, The New York Times first reported.“Governor’s edits are attached for your review,” Cuomo’s assistant wrote to the then-governor’s senior staff in June 2020, the Times report states.Cuomo wasn’t sworn under oath for the his closed-door testimony this year, but was told that he could face criminal prosecution if he knowingly made false statements, according to a transcript.The ex-governor’s controversial actions during the pandemic’s early days in 2020, especially an order to send senior citizens with COVID into nursing-homes, have been blamed for potentially causing as many as 9,000 excess deaths.Cuomo later admitted to instructing his secretary to write an email to his inner circle referring to the March directive as “the great debacle.”His role in a July 2020 state Department of Health report that undercounted nursing-home deaths has been characterized as nothing less than a “cover-up” by a US House committee.The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic alleged Cuomo’s office “edited” the report, but the emails obtained by the Times suggest his role was even more hands-on.He personally inserted text blaming employees and visiting family and friends to nursing-homes for spreading COVID and contributing to deaths, the Times report states.Cuomo, during a private questioning by House members in June, claimed he did not review a draft of the nursing-home death report before it was released.He said he didn’t recall reviewing, editing or speaking about the report before it was issued July 7, 2020, according to a transcript.And none of the emails detailed in The Times ...