California, New York, Pennsylvania, and others are putting COVID-19 positive patients back into their nursing homes, and nursing home deaths are staggering. The governors of those states, first and foremost among which is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, should immediately resign.
New York alone “has recorded at least 4,968 confirmed and presumed deaths related to the novel coronavirus at nursing homes and adult-care facilities, including 71 confirmed fatalities at one center,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
All of these deaths have happened as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “The nursing homes, we said from day one, are the most vulnerable places.” He banned visitors to nursing homes and long-term care facilities, claiming to take measures early to protect them. At the same time though, he allowed the return of COVID-19 positive patients to those same facilities, almost ensuring that many thousands of the most vulnerable would be exposed and would die from the virus.
What happened to common sense?
On the face of it, the COVID positive patients should never have been returned to these vulnerable facilities. They should have been kept away just like family members and visitors were kept away to protect the elderly.
When asked how this happened, Cuomo blamed the rules and regulations, saying the facilities had to provide adequate protection and quarantine facilities to be able to take these patients. Cuomo explained the financial reality this way; facilities lose money if they can’t house patients, therefore the facilities took the patients even though they could not adequately protect their staff or their patients. Then the virus spread in the facilities and patients started dying.
Andrew Cuomo: (47:35)
Now, when a person gets transferred, then they lose a patient, they lose that revenue, I understand, but the relationship is, the contract is you have this resident, you get paid, you must provide adequate care. If you can’t, that patient has to be transferred to a facility where they get adequate care.
You have to conclude one of two things: One, the different facilities didn’t realize that if patients in their facilities die from COVID-19, they will lose revenue. Or two, they knew they would lose people, but they didn’t have a choice, and now their revenue is down by the number of people lost to the coronavirus.