EXCLUSIVE: A New York City nursing home director told Fox News that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s order last year demanding that such facilities receive COVID-positive patients released from hospitals was “ridiculous” and that he warned state officials “no” we can do that. “
Michael Kraus, the administrator of the Silver Lakes Specialized Care Center in Staten Island, said he immediately raised the alarm after first hearing about the March 25, 2020 request on a conference call with other directors, hospital leaders and state officials.
“I said this is ridiculous. We can’t do this. It just isn’t right for residents,” Kraus told Fox News in an exclusive interview with correspondent Aishah Hasnie that aired on Thursday in “America Reports”.
Kraus told Fox News that at one point last year, hospitals told him “please don’t send your sick patients to us”. (News from the fox)
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“And did you vocalize that in those phone conversations?” Hasnie asked.
“I vocalized,” said Kraus. “And then, once he was knocked down, I never spoke again.”
Kraus – for the first time – revealed what happened behind the scenes after the controversial guideline in New York, where more than 15,000 people died in state nursing homes and long-term institutions at COVID-19.
However, recently in January, New York reported a fraction of that number – about 8,500 deaths. Critics blame Cuomo’s order, which he rescinded in May 2020.
The issue made national headlines last month when Cuomo’s top adviser, Melissa DeRosa, told Democratic state lawmakers that the governor’s administration had withheld information about the death toll because, as she said, “we froze” in the face of a possible federal investigation of the Trump administration. Cuomo himself later acknowledged that both state lawmakers and the Department of Justice had made requests in August 2020 for a complete accounting of deaths in nursing homes.
Earlier this month, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that the governor’s top advisers pressured health officials over the summer to remove data from a report that showed the number of deaths in nursing homes related to COVID it was bigger than what was publicly recognized at the time.
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The matter is being investigated by the FBI and the Brooklyn Prosecutor’s Office. Cuomo admitted that things “should have been done differently”, but did not even apologize for the fiasco.
At the time, the initial order was in effect – with the coronavirus spreading rapidly across New York City – Kraus says he found his facility amid a shortage of PPE, as “our suppliers [who] normally you would send us the PPE, we were unable to send our complete order. ”
“Because?” Hasnie asked.
“As they were guided, they must first sell to the hospital,” said Kraus. “So we were rationed, if we placed a large order, they might give us 20%. And they just said they were not allowed to sell us any more.”
Faced with challenging circumstances, Kraus says he went with his intuition and decided to close his facility for 10 weeks, not accepting new admissions.
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But this stance was resisted by local hospitals.
“We were told, ‘Please don’t send your sick patients to us,'” said Kraus. “There were several threatening hospitals.”
And Kraus says his facilities were not the only ones pressured by hospitals to receive coronavirus-positive patients.
“Threatened in what way?” Hasnie asked him.
“Well, I mean, I never saw the exact emails, but they were threatened with being reported. For noncompliance,” replied Kraus.
Ultimately, Silver Lake reported two confirmed coronavirus deaths, six off-site deaths and 37 presumed coronavirus deaths.
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Kraus also praised his team for their efforts during the pandemic.
“I can say that I speak on behalf of the team that sometimes feels that it is doing thankless work, but is actually doing God’s work,” he told Fox News.
Samuel Chamberlain of Fox News contributed to this report.