Andrew Cuomo to testify before Congress regarding Covid nursing home controversy

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Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has agreed to testify before Congress about his administration’s controversial handling of New York nursing homes during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Governor Cuomo will be appearing before our select Subcommittee on the Pandemic on June 11,” Rep Brad Wenstrup, the Ohio Republican who chairs the panel, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday. “This will be a transcribed interview at 10am.”

The former Democratic governor will be asked by the panel of lawmakers about his March 2020 advisory, which barred nursing homes in New York from rejecting patients solely on the basis of a COVID-19 diagnosis.

“I’m trying to learn why he would do something like this,” Mr Wenstrup said.

“In 2021, an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James found that the New York State Department of Health undercounted COVID-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes by approximately 50 per cent.”

The health department failed to report roughly 4,100 deaths between April 2020 and February 2021, according to a 2022 audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

However, Mr Cuomo has insisted that the advisory was consistent with guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CNN reported.

Last month, Mr Cuomo was sent a subpoena to testify along with a letter in which Mr Wenstrup alleged that the “misguided decision effectively admitted thousands of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes, causing predictable but deadly consequences for New York’s most vulnerable.”

The agreement comes roughly nine months after the panel began contacting Mr Cuomo, according to Mr Wenstrup, who said the panel was “ignored on many of our requests, there were delays.”

Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Mr Cuomo, told CNN, “There’s no news here, we agreed to do this months ago.”

As part of the agreement, Mr Cuomo will do a transcribed interview instead of a deposition.

Mr Cuomo resigned in 2021 after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a damning report that the former governor had sexually harassed state employees and others outside of government, citing 11 women in the report.

Mr Cuomo has denied the allegations.