AP Photo/Seth Wenig
- Just two days into her administration, NY Gov. Kathy Hochul released new COVID-19 death numbers.
- Hochul updated the state's tally by adding 12,000 more deaths than were previously reported.
- "Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration," Hochul said on MSNBC.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul acknowledged an additional 12,000 COVID-19 deaths in New York State that her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, did not, the Associated Press reported.
The new governor said the new tally will increase transparency after former governor Andrew Cuomo was accused of covering up COVID-19 deaths in state nursing homes during the beginning of the pandemic.
Beyond the sexual harassment allegations that preceded Cuomo's resignation, the nursing home death count became one of several scandals that plagued his third term.
"We're now releasing more data than had been released before publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what's being displayed by the CDC," Hochul said Wednesday on MSNBC.
"There's a lot of things that weren't happening and I'm going to make them happen," she continued. "Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration."
Before her bombshell 165-page report that found Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused the former governor of undercounting nursing home deaths by as much as 50%.
Cuomo's top aide at the time, Melissa DeRosa, told lawmakers in a leaked call that the administration was sitting on the nursing home-related death tally as a preemptive measure against a potential federal investigation urged by former President Donald Trump.
A March 25, 2020 executive order mandated that nursing home patients who were hospitalized with the COVID-19 should be discharged back to nursing homes, as long as the providers could take adequate care of them.
The Cuomo administration insisted they were simply following CDC guidance.
Hospital capacity was a primary concern at the time, but the order left nursing home staff in a bind, particularly with the potential for the recently hospitalized residents to spread the virus if they were still within the window of contagiousness.
Cuomo accused Trump, Fox News and the New York Post of conspiring against him by running with the story.
Questions remain over whether Hochul will fire Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, who was heavily implicated in the attorney general report on nursing homes.
