Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has agreed to testify earlier than Congress about his administration’s controversial dealing with of New York nursing properties throughout the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Governor Cuomo can be showing earlier than our choose Subcommittee on the Pandemic on June 11,” Rep Brad Wenstrup, the Ohio Republican who chairs the panel, informed CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday. “This can be a transcribed interview at 10am.”
The previous Democratic governor can be requested by the panel of lawmakers about his March 2020 advisory, which barred nursing properties in New York from rejecting sufferers solely on the idea of a COVID-19 analysis.
“I’m making an attempt to study why he would do one thing like this,” Mr Wenstrup mentioned.
“As a physician who has handled infections, it goes towards all medical widespread sense to take somebody who was extremely contagious and put them amongst probably the most weak.”
In 2021, an investigation by New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James discovered that the New York State Division of Well being undercounted COVID-19 deaths amongst residents of nursing properties by roughly 50 per cent.
The well being division did not report roughly 4,100 deaths between April 2020 and February 2021, in response to a 2022 audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Nevertheless, Mr Cuomo has insisted that the advisory was in step with steering from the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, CNN reported.
When pressed by Jake Tapper Friday about an alleged cover-up, Mr Wenstrup responded, “Effectively, he’s going to have the chance to disclaim that once more and try what among the different persons are saying really passed off and whether or not it was intentional to play these numbers down or whether or not it was simply miscounting.”
Final month, Mr Cuomo was despatched a subpoena to testify together with a letter by which Mr Wenstrup alleged that the “misguided determination successfully admitted hundreds of COVID-19 optimistic sufferers into nursing properties, inflicting predictable however lethal penalties for New York’s most weak.”
The settlement comes roughly 9 months after the panel started contacting Mr Cuomo, in response to Mr Wenstrup, who mentioned the panel was “ignored on a lot of our requests, there have been delays.”
Wealthy Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Mr Cuomo, informed CNN, “There’s no information right here, we agreed to do that months in the past.”
As a part of the settlement, Mr Cuomo will do a transcribed interview as a substitute of a deposition.
Mr Cuomo resigned in 2021 after New York Lawyer Normal Letitia James launched a damning report that the previous governor had sexually harassed state workers and others exterior of presidency, citing 11 girls within the report.
Mr Cuomo has denied the allegations.