Cuomo administration bought half a billion dollars of medical equipment during the pandemic it never used: audit

Former Gov.Andrew Cuomo spent almost $453 million during the COVID-19 pandemic stockpiling medical equipment such as ventilators that have almost entirely gone unused, a damning new audit by the state comptroller found.State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found that only three items out of thousands purchased by the former governor’s office were ever sent out to hospitals, according to the report.

“New York state bought hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and x-ray machines, that now sits unused in storage facilities across the state, missing recommended maintenance and costing taxpayers storage expenses,” DiNapoli wrote in a statement.The audit found that DOH’s stockpile, called the medical emergency response cache, grew from around 4,800 pieces of equipment before the pandemic, to 252,000 items now.Of the roughly 248,000 pieces of equipment purchased during the pandemic, only three were ever deployed, the auditors found after reviewing databases supposed to keep track of the items.The auditors also visited the warehouses and found some items were missing.“DOH officials said that it was possible that they were put into use at some point and not recorded,” the report noted.Despite a special committee within the DOH being charged with figuring out what to do with the stockpile in 2021, much of the equipment remains untouched and going to waste in state warehouses.The auditors noted that the health department refused to provide documents providing details about how decisions were made about what to do with the stockpile.Gov.Kathy Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.In March 2020, Cuomo’s office took over leading the pandemic response for the state.

Responding to an uptick in hospitalizations and fear that the crisis could overwhelm the state’s hospitals, Cuomo’s administration gave consultancy firm McKinsey & Company $5.1 million to tell it h...