“Every day you think about her and miss her a lot, it’s just terrible,” he told CNN at his home in Albany.
Agnes Minissale died in April after contracting Covid-19 at his nursing home, Minissale said. She would be 94 on Valentine’s Day. Minissale’s father-in-law, Edward Bridgeford, was in the same nursing home and died of the virus two weeks later, he said. Both fell ill in the nursing home and later died in the hospital.
Peter Arbeeny said his last goodbye to his 89-year-old father, Norman Arbeeny, at home more than a week after taking him out of a Brooklyn retirement home in late March.
“It was a horrible and emotionally challenging time to deal with a sick father who needed medical attention. And we were in a rush to get him out of the nursing home. We caught him, but he left with Covid,” said Arbeeny.
But in addition to the anguish of losing loved ones to the coronavirus, families in New York had to deal with the policy surrounding the deaths.
Minissale has spoken openly about his frustration with the way the Cuomo government is dealing with the pandemic when it comes to asylums. Arbeeny, a longtime Democrat who voted for Cuomo, says “Democrats are on the wrong side of history with this issue” and promises to find out why so many nursing home residents have died in the state.
Covid-19 destroys New York nursing homes
At issue for these families is a statement issued last year on March 25. In it, Cuomo enacted an order requiring nursing homes to accept patients transferred from hospitals who had already tested positive for Covid-19, if the patients were considered clinically stable.
Families believe that the advisory, in part, pushed the virus to the homes where the most vulnerable live.
“He (Cuomo) was saying that we cannot let (Covid-19) into nursing homes, it will pass by (residents) like wildfire,” said Minissale, referring to one of the governor’s daily Covid-19 briefings, “and at the same time, when he is telling you this, he is issuing a mandate … which contradicts itself.”
Minissale lost his mother and father-in-law in the six-week period it took the Cuomo government to rescind the order.
On Monday, Cuomo addressed the matter in a long press conference, complete with the usual graphics and personal reflections we expect from the governor.
He referred to the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he says his administration followed. “At the time,” said Cuomo, “the residents who were leaving the hospitals were probably not contagious, because at that time the viral load (was) so low that (they) were not contagious.”
Cuomo also said that recovering patients from Covid-19 were transferred from hospitals as quickly as possible so as not to contract a secondary infection, and that nursing homes could only accept patients if they could take care of them.
He doubled the claim that it was the caregivers who brought the virus to the facility, not the order.
“Covid did not enter nursing homes for people coming from hospitals,” said Cuomo on Monday. “Covid entered nursing homes by the team entering the nursing home when we didn’t even know we had Covid.”
At a news conference on Friday, health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker said he upheld the March 25 decision.
“We made the right public health decision at the time and, faced with the same facts, we would make the same decisions again,” he said.
He added that, at the time, the models showed that hospitalizations were increasing “at a dizzying rate” and that the state was running out of ICU capacity.
He also said that since May – when the notice was rescinded – no resident has been admitted to a unit without a negative test, visitation is still restricted and staff are tested twice a week.
“And yet, we are still seeing outbreaks and deaths in nursing homes, the same death rate in nursing homes that we saw before March 25 after March 25, and in the fall and winter,” said Zucker.
Their explanation is one that families have heard before and, for them, an explanation that does not match.
They think the governor made a poor choice and wonder why he didn’t consider other options, such as placing long-term care residents in field facilities, such as the Javits Center, to recover, instead of returning to their home facilities. .
Families want the Cuomo government to take over the consultancy’s role in spreading the virus in these facilities at the height of the New York pandemic.
“He did not allow us to suffer, that is what really irritates me. Acknowledge your mistakes and we will learn from that and move on,” said Arbeeny.
Claims for a cover-up
At the beginning of the pandemic, New York publicly released only information about Covid-19 deaths classified according to where people died.
For example, Minissale says his mother-in-law and father-in-law were listed as dead in hospitals, not in nursing homes.
For some families who lost loved ones to Covid-19 in nursing homes, the decision on how the data was released seemed an attempt to hide the true cost of Cuomo’s actions, including the March 25 order.
In a virtual meeting with a group of Democratic state legislators last week, Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to lawmakers that they “froze” after receiving the DOJ’s request.
“We were in a position where we were not sure whether what we were going to give to the Justice Department or what we gave you, what we started to say would be used against us,” she said, according to a transcript of the call released by the office. of the governor.
“If they froze with an investigation letter, what do they think they did to us with their March 25 directive,” said Arbeeny, “Are you saying you follow federal guidelines, can we see communications? Can you show us the state health professionals who said this was a good idea? “
Earlier this month, it was the decision of a New York Supreme Court judge in favor of the Empire Center for Public Policy that pressured the state to provide a true account of the number of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes.
“His explanation (Cuomo) is unsupported. I don’t know if we will ever get a straight answer,” said Bill Hammond, senior health policy researcher at the Empire Center for Public Policy. “He has seriously damaged his credibility. It is important for the public to trust people who make decisions.”
CNN contacted the Cuomo administration to obtain a response to the families’ comments, but received no response.
Demanding apologies and investigation
This Monday, Cuomo was responsible for the “void” that the delay in the release of the data created, but says that his government has hidden nothing and the figures released by the Department of Health are accurate.
“The void we created by not providing information was filled with skepticism and cynicism and conspiracy theories that added to the confusion … and that created more anxiety, for the families of loved ones,” he said.
But some families and lawmakers think that Cuomo is doing politics and that his explanations do not help.
“We apologize and did not receive (on Monday). We were defensive, we had a deviation. We needed his empathy. We needed the respect of our governor, ”said Arbeeny.
Hammond says his nonprofit is now “analyzing the data” to determine the impact of the March 25 order.
Minissale and Arbeeny say they expect the state legislature to investigate further, which the Republicans have asked for and some Democrats have discussed, according to CNN reports.
“I didn’t ask for his resignation. I didn’t ask for an impeachment. I wanted nothing more than an apology and a proper investigation,” said Arbeeny, “the truth never needs to be explained later, the lies do.”
Cuomo said on Monday that he explained what happened and there is nothing to investigate.
Aaron Cooper and Kristina Sgueglia contributed to this story.