It was just four years ago, but it seems longer: then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo provided daily pandemic briefings for New Yorkers detailing New York’s response.
He held 111 often nationally televised, informational briefings about the state’s response starting in early March 2020. But Cuomo’s COVID legacy will also include how he handled deaths in nursing homes – a number that reached over 15,000.
New York was called the pandemic’s epicenter and recorded its first coronavirus case on March 1 – and after, the virus quickly spread.
“I actually think the state was slow to wake up to the danger,” said Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the conservative think tank the Empire Center for Public Policy.
Officials – particularly Republicans in Congress – still want answers from Cuomo.
“New York State did about as good a job as any governmental jurisdiction in America,” said Richard Gottfried, the longtime former State Assembly Health Committee chairman and Manhattan Democrat.
He said New York handled the challenge of the new virus well, given the changing circumstances, but noted that long-standing issues, such as underfunding in the hospital system – particularly in the five boroughs – were exposed.
“Cuomo was a national hero,” Gottfried said.
But deaths in nursing homes, and then the Cuomo administration’s unwillingness to provide information, drew outrage.
“They started messing with the death toll in nursing homes,” said Hammond.
“The main thing that they did was that they left out nursing home residents, who, because they got sick, were taken to the hospital and then died in the hospital and that was about a third of the total death toll that they started leaving out of their official reports.”
The Department of Health released a July 2020 report that downplayed death figures, blaming staff for disease spread.
But in February 2021, the state attorney general released a scathing report: the Cuomo administration undercounted deaths “by as much as 50%.”
“To this day, my father’s death hasn’t counted as a COVID death,” said Peter Arbeeny.
His father, 89-year-old Norman Arbeeny, died 13 days after living in a Cobble Hill, Brooklyn nursing home in 2020.
He blames the since-revoked admission policy, later known as the controversial “March 25th” order.
Although Cuomo has said New York followed federal guidance, the recommendations turned into a state mandate that said nursing homes can’t deny residents based on known or suspected COVID cases.
Arbeeny said he also resents the former governor’s focus on writing a book detailing his handling of the pandemic.
The book, called “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19,” netted Cuomo a $5 million publishing deal. Crown Publishing later cancelled plans to reprint the book.
“It’s unfortunate for our families that Cuomo was first contacted, according to the [State] Assembly report, on March 19, of 2020 to write a book,” said Arbeeny.
Cuomo began writing the memoir with government staffers just weeks after the first case was exposed, according to emails obtained by the Empire Center for Public Policy.
He later sought approval from the state’s ethics agency, which greenlit his request in 2020. The panel later stripped its approval and has since demanded Cuomo to return the $5 million in profits.
Since then, Gov. Kathy Hochul launched an independent review of the state’s pandemic response, but critics argue it’s a weak effort as the private investigators lack subpoena power to compel interviews and request documents.
Gottfried helped write a bill he says would chart a path for a bipartisan review and provide legal powers to subpoena individuals and information. That legislation did not pass both chambers of the legislature during the 2024 session, which ended on June 8.
“The advantage of a commission is that it cannot only issue subpoenas but can legally be entitled to information without necessarily having to go through a subpoena process,” said Gottfried.
He argues, a true investigation into New York’s pandemic response would help repair trust with New Yorkers.