Mayoral candidate and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo used heavy-handed tactics and secretiveness with Big Apple officials as the city struggled to contain the deadly COVID pandemic, a scathing new study says.
Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio also gets dinged in the report, which was issued by several city agencies that analyzed New York City’s handling of the health crisis — and which specifically criticized the toxic relationship between him and Cuomo.
“Coordination challenges between Governor Cuomo’s and Mayor de Blasio’s administrations impeded City-State collaboration and contributed to duplicative work, inconsistent recommendations, and a loss of trust from New Yorkers,” says the COVID-19 Response Review Report covering January 2020 to July 2022 and obtained by The Post.
The analysis was prepared by city agencies — notably the Health Department, Office of Emergency Management and Health+Hospitals — serving under Cuomo’s now-mayoral foe, Hizzoner Eric Adams.
Cuomo was accused in the report of big-footing City Hall and unnecessarily micro-managing the city’s response.
“The Cuomo administration was reluctant to share data with the City and often refused to give advance warning of policy changes and new directives,” the study said.
For example, in March 2020, the state restricted the city’s access to its Health Emergency Response Data System (HERDS), which tracks hospital capacity across New York state, though the city historically had regular access.
“This limited the City’s insight into hospital impacts and hindered its ability to support the NYC healthcare system,” the report said.
Don Weiss, the former longtime “surveillance director” for the city Health Department, said state Health Department officials he worked with for years told him they weren’t supposed to share information.
“It was because of the pissing contest between Cuomo and de Blasio. It was ludicrous,” he said.
A former state official said Cuomo’s “strong dislike” of de Blasio certainly was an issue but that officials in Albany and City Hall still found “creative ways” to quietly work together despite the chill between the two power brokers. --->READ MORE HERE
The city Health Department missed early detection of COVID-19 because it listened to CDC bureaucrats — losing the chance to potentially spare untold numbers from death, a former agency director claims.
The department’s leadership decided to strictly adhere to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s rigid COVID-19 testing guidelines in early 2020, which delayed confirming the presence and transmission of the virus in the Big Apple by more than a month, writes Don Weiss in his new book, “Disease Detectives: True Stories of NYC Outbreaks.”
Weiss, a former “surveillance director” for the Big Apple’s Department of Health, was monitoring the situation from the trenches at the time.
He said he was frustrated by CDC guidelines that limited testing to suspected infected patients who returned to the US from Wuhan, China, and elsewhere overseas, exhibited severe lower respiratory illness or were exposed to a known case.
Many New Yorkers were only exhibiting mild, flu-like symptoms from COVID and would not be tested under the CDC criteria.
That meant they were potentially unaware that they had it — and more importantly, could infect others who were in poor health, immunocompromised or with serious pre-existing conditions or illness.
At a time without a vaccine, COVID turned into a death sentence for many elderly people and others with serious illness.
“I worried that we’d miss the opportunity to prevent an onslaught,” Weiss said in the book of the limited testing.
“By following the CDC’s strict criteria for testing we were missing cases. … The overwhelming probability favored mild cases arriving in NYC, but our hands felt tied.”
He said he and some others who tracked the disease wanted to test residents suspected of having even mild cases of COVID-19 to start a public health campaign sooner.
“But we were voted down and we stuck to CDC’s criteria. … We needed to go off the CDC script,” wrote Weiss, 67, who directed the city DOH’s surveillance unit for 22 years. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
How COVID changed America, in 12 charts
In their own words: How COVID changed America
USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates
YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates
NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest
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