The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences remains silent on whether to terminate New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s award after its administration confirmed that thousands of nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than state official counts previously. recognized.
In the past two weeks, the TV awards organization has not responded to questions from Fox News to comment on the Cuomo Emmy situation, even after its trusted advisor, Melissa DeRosa, shared the bombshell revelation on Thursday that the The government hid unfavorable information about coronavirus deaths in the state’s nursing homes because of concerns that it “would be used against us”.
Speaking to Democratic leaders during a recent conference call, DeRosa said officials in the governor’s office “froze” after then President Donald Trump turned the pandemic into “a giant political football” and began tweeting about the state’s mismanagement, he reported. the New York Post.
Cuomo received the International Emmy Founders Award in November “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world”.
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The Academy said the award is given to those who “cross cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity”.
Previous recipients include former Vice President Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg.
Cuomo’s award generated a significant backlash at the time because of the governor’s controversial policy on nursing homes. In March, Cuomo issued a mandate requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients who were discharged from hospitals.
The idea was to prepare for a scenario in which hospitals would be overwhelmed and would be forced to discharge patients to return to nursing homes. Cuomo reversed the guideline in May, saying that hospitals could not send patients back to nursing homes unless the test was negative.
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The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has yet to comment on the Emmy status of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, after bombastic revelations that his administration hid unfavorable information about the deaths from coronanviruses in nursing homes in the state.
(Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images)
The mandate is linked to the deaths of thousands of elderly residents – something the Cuomo government has long denied. But in late January, his government confirmed that thousands of nursing home residents died from the virus than had previously been recognized.
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The announcement came after months in which the state refused to release its true figures, showing that at least 12,743 long-term care residents died of the virus by January 19 – far more than the official count of 8,505 that day.
These numbers undermined Cuomo’s frequent argument that criticism of the virus treatment in nursing homes was part of a political “blame game” and was a justification for thousands of families who believed their loved ones were being omitted from the counts to promote the image of the governor as a pandemic hero.
Cuomo, who last fall released a book praising his leadership in treating the virus, has not refrained from using the lower death count in New York’s nursing homes to argue that his state is doing better than others in treating people in such facilities.
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“There is also no doubt that we are in this hyper-political environment, so everyone wants to point the finger,” Cuomo told CBS “This Morning” in October. “New York, in fact, is number 46 out of 50 in terms of the percentage of deaths in nursing homes … it’s not a predominantly New York problem.”
Bradford Betz and Evie Fordham of Fox News contributed to this report, as did The Associated Press.