THREAD: Why DOJ is investigating Cuomo - Cuomo intentionally sent covid positive elderly back into nursing homes, against CDC guidelines. Here’s the March 25 order he issued, a link to the March 13 CDC guidelines and grabs of the relevant portions of each. https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-20-14-nh-revised.pdf

First, it’s important to understand that every state has a “bed hold policy” in which it must re-admit residents that have been discharged from a hospital. Here is a summary of NY’s bed-hold regulation. https://govt.westlaw.com/nycrr/Document/I4fe56b20cd1711dda432a117e6e0f345?contextData=%28sc.Default%29&transitionType=Default

The March 13 CDC guidelines sought to guide states by telling them to use their emergency powers to modify the bed-hold policies. The modification recommended was to say, Nursing Homes CAN accept patients, not must, if certain criteria was met.

Such as, the nursing home would need to have the proper space and protocols in place to maintain those patients in quarantine, meaning they would need to have to set up areas of the NH that would be air tight and sealed off from other healthy residents.

In addition, the CDC said that the NH must also have sufficient PPE for staff treating these patients before they can accept them, even if they had a quarantine section prepared. As we all know, PPE was in short supply, and almost none of them had sufficient PPE to protect from

A viral infection. N95s, face shields, full body suits etc. Hospitals, on the other hand, should have had such items available. Some did, many didn’t. After the guidance was issued, many state governors, Florida included, issued executive orders that mirrored CDC guidelines

Here is Florida’s EO that DID follow the CDC guidelines: https://ahca.myflorida.com/docs/DEM_ORDER_NO.20-006_In_re_COVID-19_Public_Health_Emergency_Issued_March_15_2020.pdf?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HQA+Alert&utm_content=ESS_multi_EmergOrder_03.15.2020

In NY, as some may recall, @NYGovCuomo was absolutely freaking out by mid March about hospital capacity and PPE. So were nursing homes. They began denying re-entry to residents who were covid positive, stable (not on vents) but likely still infected because they didn’t

Want their healthy residents getting sick. On March 25th, the NY Dept of Health issued its order. That order simply reiterated the existing law. There was no reason to issue that March 25 order if their only goal was to maintain the status quo. The only reason for issuing the

order can be that they knew the March 13th guidelines differed from the law, but needed to reinforce it to nursing homes. Why did they do that? The answer is simple. Cuomo freaked out. He saw empty beds at nursing homes. He didn’t care about protocols.

He wanted to keep hospital beds available for people that weren’t nursing home residents. The real question though, is why didn’t he allow NH patients to use the field hospitals/ship that @realDonaldTrump set up? It makes absolutely no sense.

I’ll give you that those field hosp beds weren’t always there. So in the beginning, sure, I can find it somewhat understandable. But by the second week of April, there was no excuse. Bottom line, Cuomo hid behind the existing law for cover when he made the decision

Cuomo and his health department made the call. Risk the elderly to save room at hospitals for others. And to this day he denies responsibility. That is why the DOJ is probing his decision and the few other governors’ decision to do the same. (NJ/PA/MI)