The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has not publicly commented whether it will accept an award from New York governor Andrew Cuomo back after its administration confirmed last week that thousands of nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than official records. of State. previously recognized.
Cuomo received the International Emmy Founders Award in November “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and the masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world”.
The Emmy said the award is given to those who “cross cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity”.
Fox News contacted the academy, but received no response at the time of publication.
Cuomo’s prize generated significant reaction 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 mandate is linked to the deaths of thousands of elderly residents – something the Cuomo government has long denied. But last Thursday, his government confirmed that thousands of nursing home residents died from the virus than those previously admitted.
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.
ARCHIVE: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo delivers his state speech from virtually The War Room at the State Capitol in Albany, NY
(AP)
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, did not refrain from using the lower death count in New York’s nursing homes to argue that his condition is 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 … not a predominantly New York problem.”
Evie Fordham and The Associated Press of Fox News contributed to this report.