ViewPoint editor Karen Rubin is entitled to her opinion regarding whether Gov. Cuomo has been transparent about his administration’s handling and reporting of nursing home Covid-19 deaths (Williston Times, Feb. 26). But, as they say, Karen is not entitled to her own facts.
In Karen’s opinion piece, she states as supposed fact: “nursing homes could refuse to take [Covid] patients if they didn’t have the means to properly segregate them.” But Karen’s statement does not reflect the reality of the mandatory language in Cuomo’s March 25 order and the untenable situation the order created for nursing homes. The order barred nursing homes from denying admission to Covid (or Covid suspected) patients and directed that nursing homes could not test patients for Covid before deciding whether to admit them.
Chris Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, said, “A number of nursing homes have felt constrained by the [March 25] order and admitted hospital discharged patients without knowing what their Covid status was. This order made an already difficult situation almost impossible.”
Danny Tuchman, head of Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill Health Center, tried to keep Covid patients from being discharged from hospitals to his facility at a time when beds were available at the nearly empty Javits Center and even emptier USNS Comfort hospital ship. In an April 9 email, Tuchman asked the Cuomo administration, “Is there a way to send our suspected Covid cases to the Javitz center or the ship?” His request was denied outright and dozens of Cobble Hill Health Center residents died as a result of Covid.
Cuomo would later claim the patients Tuchman sought to isolate wouldn’t have met the criteria for Javits or USNS Comfort, which is easy to say when his administration never even tried to intervene on their behalf. So, Karen, if you wish to opine that the bipartisan scrutiny of Cuomo’s handling and reporting of nursing homes Covid deaths is nothing more than a political hatchet job, that is your right. But let’s stick to the facts, Karen.
Noreen Arralde
East Williston
