“Every day you think about her and you miss so much, it’s just awful,” he told CNN at his Albany home.
Agnes Minissale died in April after contracting Covid-19 at her nursing home, Minissale said. She would have been 94 years old 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 goodbye to his 89-year-old father, Norman Arbeeny, at home for more than a week after taking him out of a Brooklyn nursing home in late March.
“It was a horrifying, emotionally challenging time dealing with a sick parent who needed medical attention. And we were in a race to get him out of the nursing home. We got him, but he came out with Covid. “says Arbeeny.
But beyond fears of losing loved ones to the coronavirus, New York families have dealt with the politics surrounding the dead.
Minissale has spoken out about his frustration with the way the Cuomo government is handling the pandemic when it comes to nursing homes. Arbeeny, a lifelong Democrat who voted for Cuomo, says “Democrats are on the wrong side of history with this issue” and pledges to get to the bottom of why so many nursing home residents in the state have died.
Covid-19 devastates New York’s nursing homes
For these families, this is an advisory issued on March 25 last year, in which Cuomo initiated an injunction requiring nursing homes to accept patients transferred from hospitals that had previously tested positive for Covid-19, if the patients were medically were considered stable. .
The families believe the advising party has partially pushed the virus into the homes where the most vulnerable live.
“He (Cuomo) said we cannot allow (Covid-19) into nursing homes, it will go through (residents) like wildfire,” said Minissale, referring to one of the governor’s daily Covid-19 briefings, ” and at the same time as he tells you this, he issues a mandate … that contradicts itself. “
Minissale lost his mother and father-in-law in the six-week period it took the Cuomo government to withdraw the order.
On Monday, Cuomo addressed the issue during a lengthy press conference, complete with the usual charts and personal reflections we’ve come to expect from the governor.
He was referring to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which he says his administration followed. “At the time,” said Cuomo, “residents who left the hospitals were probably not contagious because the viral load at the time was (was) so low that (they were) not contagious.”
Cuomo also said recovering Covid-19 patients were transferred from hospitals as soon as possible so that they wouldn’t contract a secondary infection, and that nursing homes could only accept the patients if they could care for them.
He doubled down on his claim that it was the health care providers who brought the virus to the facilities, not the order.
“Covid was not brought into nursing homes by people coming from hospitals,” Cuomo said Monday. “Covid came into the nursing homes by staff who walked into the nursing home when we didn’t even know we had Covid.”
In a newsletter on Friday, health commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker that he was behind their 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, models showed that hospital admissions were increasing “at a dizzying rate” and that the state was running out of IC capacity.
He went on to say that since May – when the advice was withdrawn – no resident has been admitted to an institution without a negative test, visits are still limited and staff are tested twice a week.
“And yet we are still seeing outbreaks and fatalities in nursing homes, the same number of fatalities in nursing homes as before March 25 after March 25 and in the fall and winter,” said Zucker.
Their statement is one the families had heard before, and to them it is not true.
They feel the governor made a bad phone call and wonder why he hasn’t considered other options, such as placing long-term care residents in field facilities, such as the Javits Center, to recover, instead of returning to their homes.
The families want the Cuomo government to own the role the advisory body played in spreading the virus in these facilities at the height of the New York pandemic.
‘He hasn’t allowed us to grieve, that’s what really annoys me. Just own your mistakes and let’s learn from them and move on, ”Arbeeny said.
Claims of a cover
Early in the pandemic, New York only publicly released information about Covid-19 deaths, categorized based on where people had died.
For example, Minissale says his mother and father-in-law were listed as deaths in hospitals, not nursing homes.
To 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.
During a virtual meeting with a group of Democratic state lawmakers last week, Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa admitted to lawmakers that they were “frozen” after receiving the DOJ request.
“We were in a position where we were not sure if what we were going to give to the Justice Department or what we were giving to you, what we are starting to say would be used to us,” she said, according to a transcript of the call released by the governor’s office.
“If they held on after a letter of inquiry, what do they think they did to us with their March 25 guideline,” Arbeeny said, “You say you stick to federal guidelines, can we see the communication? Health care professionals who said that was this a good idea? “
Earlier this month, it was a ruling by a New York Supreme Court judge in favor of Empire Center for Public Policy that prompted the state to provide a true picture of the number of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes.
“His (Cuomo) statement is incorrect. I don’t know if we’ll ever get a straight answer,” said Bill Hammond, senior health policy fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy. ‘He has seriously damaged his credibility. It is important that the public trusts people to make decisions. ‘
CNN has contacted the Cuomo government to respond to the families’ comments, but has not heard anything.
Apology and investigation demands
Cuomo took responsibility on Monday for the “void” that the delay in releasing the data created, but says his administration was not hiding anything and that the figures released by the health ministry are accurate.
“The void we created by not disclosing information was filled with skepticism and cynicism and conspiracy theories that have further added to the confusion … and that caused more concern among the families of loved ones,” he said.
But some families and lawmakers think Cuomo is playing politics and that his explanation is not helpful.
“We asked for an apology, but we didn’t get it (on Monday). We got defensive, we got distraction. We needed empathy from him. We needed respect from our governor,” says Arbeeny.
Hammond says his nonprofit is now “dissecting the data” to determine the impact of the March 25 order.
Minissale and Arbeeny say they hope the state legislature will investigate further, which Republicans have called for and some Democrats have discussed, according to CNN reporting.
‘I didn’t ask for his resignation. I have not asked for impeachment. I wanted nothing more than an apology and a proper investigation, “Arbeeny said.” The truth never needs to be explained afterwards, the lies do. “
Cuomo said on Monday that he explained what happened and that there is nothing to investigate.
Aaron Cooper and Kristina Sgueglia contributed to this story.