Correction, July 27, 2020: This piece has been updated to include the correct percentage of COVID-19 deaths nationwide.
July 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – New York’s Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be impeached from office for his decision to force nursing homes in the state to take in coronavirus patients regardless of the danger to their elderly residents, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said Wednesday.
“New York had a lockdown and had 30,000 people die. New York had the worst death rate of any place in the world amidst a lockdown,” Paul told Fox News, the Daily Caller reports. “I think Governor Cuomo should be impeached, you know for what he did, for the disastrous decision he made to send patients with coronavirus patients back to nursing homes.”
“Terrible public health policy decisions were made and, I think, in the end, none of these polices have probably been good for our economy or actually good in containing the virus,” the senator, who is a doctor and had the coronavirus in late March, lamented.
As of July 24, the United States is estimated to have seen more than 4.2 million COVID-19 cases, with more than 147,000 deaths (3.5%) and 1.9 million recoveries. An estimated 40% of those deaths have come from nursing homes. New York has been the hardest-hit state, with more than 32,000 deaths, thanks in large part to the virus spreading within the state’s nursing homes.
For months, the pro-abortion Cuomo has been under fire for ordering that nursing homes cannot turn away patients diagnosed with COVID-19, despite the fact the virus is most dangerous to the elderly. Cuomo initially blamed nursing home deaths on the Trump administration, by claiming that a federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance forced him to put the infected back in nursing homes.
But Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) explained that the CDC actually called for elderly housing decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis, factoring in the “ability of the accepting facility to meet the recommended infection control practices,” such as the “ability to place residents in a designated COVID-19 care unit that is equipped with the resources and [personal protective equipment] to safely prevent the spread of infections.”
Cuomo’s placement of individuals known to be infectious among the state’s most vulnerable contrasts sharply with the extreme measures New York leaders have taken to prevent spreading the virus in less risky situations, such as restricting in-person religious services.
On Thursday, Cuomo announced that police officers would be stationed at New York airports to quarantine any travelers from states with high infection rates, and that bars will be forbidden from serving alcohol unless they serve “substantial” food along with it.