Cuomo defends handling of nursing home covid-19 crisis

NEW YORK (77WABC) – Under intense criticism for his handling of the nursing home covid-19 crisis, Governor Cuomo continued to defend his administration against accusations of any wrongdoing.

In a Monday afternoon press conference at the state Capitol Cuomo said, “In retrospect, we should have prioritized providing more information.”

He added, “No excuses: I accept responsibility for that. I am in charge. I take responsibility. We should have provided more information faster.”

In response to allegations of a coverup and calls for probes and even impeachment, however, the governor said that “there’s nothing to investigate.”

The Justice Department in late August had begun an inquiry into nursing home deaths in New York and elsewhere.

“And basically, we froze,” Melissa DeRosa, who is secretary to the governor and his closest confidante, admitted to state lawmakers on a conference call the New York Post revealed in a bombshell report last week.

“We weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she said.

DeRosa’s admission led one observer to quip, “Did you freeze before or after you called your mother-in-law.”

Cuomo has been heavily criticized for the New York State directive issued early in the pandemic that mandated nursing homes accept covid-19 positive patients even though they were ill-equipped.

There are now growing bi-partisan calls to have a federal investigation into Cuomo’s handling of the crisis.

Cuomo on whether he’ll apologize for the mass death in N.Y. nursing homes: "I accept responsibility" for letting people wrongly think I did anything wrong pic.twitter.com/YOMqnmjtRr

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 15, 2021