At a press conference in May 2020, Cuomo, who is in his third term, at the time compared the nursing home deaths to those happening in hospitals and claimed that there was “nobody” to prosecute for their deaths.
“We lost 139 people yesterday in hospitals. Who is accountable for those 139 deaths? Well, how do we get justice for those families who had 139 deaths? What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody. Nobody. Mother nature. God,” said Cuomo in May 2020, adding that he believes New York has the best doctors, nurses and hospital system in the world.
“Look, people rationalize death in different ways. I don’t think there was any logical rationale to say they would be alive today…I said, from day one, the fear is we overwhelm the hospital system, and then people die, because we couldn’t get them the medical care,” he said.
In other press conference appearances, Cuomo dodged questions on why it took his administration so long to release coronavirus patient and death information to the general public. In one instance, he said that any nursing home that submitted data “under penalty of perjury” was subjected to a criminal investigation.
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