Forty-eight percent of New York State registered voters give the three-term Democratic governor a negative review – with 44 percent giving him a positive one – according to a Siena College poll released Wednesday.
A health department mandate issued on March 25 required that all nursing homes in the state readmit residents who had tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Roughly 5,800 confirmed or presumed deaths from the coronavirus have been reported in New York’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. That’s approximately one-fifth of all coronavirus fatalities in the state.
The soaring death toll in the state’s nursing homes has grabbed national headlines and put a spotlight on the governor, who earlier in the coronavirus crisis grabbed tons of positive attention for the way he was handling his state’s response to the outbreak and for his daily briefings on the pandemic.
Cuomo has twice pointed toward federal guidelines for the controversial directive. The order has been partially altered to prevent hospitals from discharging COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes – while requiring that staff at the facilities be tested twice per week for the coronavirus.
There’s been a chorus of calls by state lawmakers for independent investigations into how the March 25 directive may have impacted the skyrocketing death toll at the nursing homes.
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