New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been working non-stop to provide New Yorkers with constant Covid-19 updates.
New York has endured the most amount of coronavirus cases and deaths out of every state in the US. Governor Andrew Cuomo has been working non-stop to provide New Yorkers with constant Covid-19 updates and policy changes to ensure that we all can return to a life of normalcy as quickly and safely as possible.
Recently, Cuomo celebrated a steep decline in coronavirus-related hospitalizations and deaths within the past week, however, with every little celebration, Cuomo is quick to emphasize that there’s still a lot of recovery work to be done. Nursing home death rates, for example, in New York are continuing to increase, which was a direct result of the state mandating that these facilities continue to take on patients even if they’re positive.
This past Sunday Cuomo stated in a press conference that the number of new hospitalizations is just about where it was when NY initially went into lockdown. The death rate in NY has seen the same sort of steadying out that mimics what it looked like here in March. Cuomo also announced that while the “pause” lockdown order is still set to expire this week, New York’s coronavirus state of emergency declaration will remain in effect until June 6th. As of right now, lockdown policies are set to ease on May 15th, but it’s dependent on many factors such as the rates in which new cases/deaths continue to appear.
“All nursing home staff must now be tested for COVID-19 twice a week, this rule is not optional — it’s mandatory. The new policy still allows nursing homes to take on some people with COVID-19, such as those who are at home and need care. But hospitals are responsible for finding alternatives for the patients they discharge, and nursing facilities shouldn’t take on coronavirus patients if unable to care for them,” Cuomo said.
Stephen Hanse – the president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living – went on in that same press conference to praise the states many assisted living facilities that have been working just as hard as our countries doctors/nurses who are also on the front lines during this pandemic.
“From the onset of this pandemic, nursing homes and assisted living providers have been on the front lines of the battle. The only way we will defeat this virus is working together with the State to ensure all nursing homes and assisted living providers are afforded the necessary resources to accomplish this goal,” Hanse said.
Hanse continued to acknowledge and praise the state for listening to our healthcare workers concerns and implementing real solutions with the resources we have. It couldn’t have come at a better time either, as New York has topped the list of states with the most nursing home/assisted living facility deaths related to Covid-19.
Across America about 26,000 individuals died in nursing homes due to complications brought on by the virus; around 5,300, or 20%, of those deaths took place in New York. In general around 25 individuals living in these facilities are dying everyday throughout the US.
“Any nursing home that fails to follow health procedures will lose their license. Remember: If a nursing home cannot provide adequate care, they MUST call the State Department of Health to transfer the resident,” Cuomo tweeted.
Even with these new policy changes, New Yorkers with loved ones in nursing homes are anything but happy with the way the state government has handled this pandemic in relation to assisted living facilities.
“The way this has been handled by the state is totally irresponsible, negligent and stupid. They knew better. They shouldn’t have sent these people into nursing homes,” said Elaine Mazzotta, a nurse whose mother died last month of COVID-19 at a Long Island nursing home. The root to a lot of this criticism stems from a place of remembering how we emphasized that the elderly with pre-existing health conditions are the most vulnerable to this virus, so shouldn’t they be the most protected? Especially if their loved ones are paying for them to live in these facilities where they assume they will be safe.
The biggest backlash Cuomo has received so far was after he claimed that it wasn’t the government’s responsibility to provide masks and protective gowns to nursing homes because they’re privately owned; even though they’re also still considered healthcare facilities by the state.
“It was such an insensitive thing to say. If we had focused on that [getting masks and gowns to nursing homes] early on, we could have saved a lot of lives,” said Democrat state Assemblyman Ron Kim. Kim went on to claim that his group of advocates has joined forces with other state assemblymen throughout the US to buy and provide protective gear and medical supplies to the country’s many nursing homes that are currently suffering.
On Cuomo’s end, he responded to the backlash by claiming his administration has already provided more than 10 million pieces of protective equipment to nursing homes and has also created an online database for the 95,000 assisted living workers in the US who have been providing healthcare services to the elderly.
It’s currently still unclear what New York is going to look like in a month’s time, however, if one thing is for sure it’s that we have a state government that is at least talking to us everyday and updating us on every new advancement that comes our way. So now, we just keep doing our part by remaining inside and continuing to practice social distancing.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
