Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home policy proves tragic: Goodwin

By Michael Goodwin

The letter was heartbreaking as it recounted the death of an 88-year-old woman in a New York nursing home. But it was also angry and accurate about a strange New York policy that is ­fatally wrongheaded.

“I am wondering who will hold Gov. Cuomo accountable for the deaths of so many older people due to his reckless decision to place covid19 patients in nursing and rehabilitation homes,” the letter began. “I am writing as a daughter who lost her beautiful 88 year old mother who was receiving physical therapy at one such facility.”

The writer, Arlene Mullin, went on to recount examples of the governor promising to protect the elderly because of their known vulnerability. She noted that he named his stay-at-home order after his own mother, Matilda ­Cuomo, and talked several times about protecting her.

“My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable,” Cuomo said a month ago.

Mullin had another complaint, too — that the media never asked the governor about an order mandating that nursing homes admit and readmit patients who tested positive for the coronavirus, despite the extraordinary number of deaths among the elderly.

That drought ended Monday when The Post’s Bernadette Hogan asked about the policy at ­Cuomo’s daily briefing. His ­answer was stunning.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know,” the governor said.

He turned to Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, who confirmed the policy, saying “if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home. The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there.”

The second part of Zucker’s answer is debatable, the first part is not. The disastrous results speak for themselves.

Diana Mongiello (center) with daughter Arlene Mullin (right) and granddaughter Laura Brereton.

The state concedes that 3,448 residents of nursing homes or adult-care facilities are known to have died from the coronavirus, or nearly 25 percent of all deaths in New York. More than 2,000 of the total are in the five boroughs, and officials acknowledge that the real numbers are almost certainly higher.

The New York policy is especially odd given that the first large outbreak of the virus in the United States took place in a nursing home. The Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., attributed 13 deaths to the virus before March 11, and at the time, the number represented 60 percent of all the fatalities in the nation. Since then, at least 24 others have died there.

That same week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged that special attention be given to seniors. “It’s so clear that the overwhelming weight of serious disease and mortality is on those who are elderly and those with a serious comorbidity: heart disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, obesity, respiratory difficulties,” Fauci told the American Medical Association. He said there would always be exceptions but that “if you look at the weight of the data, the risk group is very, very clear.”

Indeed, early reports from around the world showed that death rates from the virus soared with age. Among those who also had other major health issues, the rates were off the charts.

For example, a study released in Italy on March 17 found that more than 99 percent of 355 coronavirus fatalities there suffered from other health issues. The average age of those who died was 79.5 years.

Thus, it was well known that the elderly were easy targets for the coronavirus before New York adopted its Health Department directive on March 25 requiring nursing homes to accept those with the disease.

Zucker’s Monday defense included his claim that the state is working with such facilities to protect other residents and health care workers by providing equipment and monitoring.

Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, harshly dismissed the claim as false.

“It’s either he’s lying or they have absolutely no idea what’s ­going on on the ground,” Kim told The Post.

For her part, Arlene Mullin is not satisfied. In an interview Tuesday, the Long Island educator said she has sent four emails to Cuomo’s office on the issue but has never received a response.

“I get it, it’s a crisis,” she said of the pandemic. “But I really want to know why the governor would put that population at such risk.”

Her mom, Diana Mongiello, a great-grandmother, was in a rehab center that had accepted coronavirus patients when she developed a fever on April 5. At 8 a.m. the next day, a nursed called to say Mongiello tested positive. Five hours later, she was pronounced dead.

When I told Mullin of Cuomo’s answer — that he didn’t know about the policy — she was silent, then wondered:

“What the heck were they ­thinking?”

She still deserves an answer.

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Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home policy proves tragic: Goodwin