The Cuomo family received special access to government-run COVID-19 testing arranged by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration claimed two sources who had direct knowledge of the incident. Aside from the Cuomo family, also given special access were other prominent people when the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York last year.
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According to one of the sources, high-ranking state health officials were behind the decision to make testing of individuals close to Gov. Cuomo a priority. It largely occurred in March 2020, when the general population was still recognizing the severity of the COVID-19, and testing was not readily available.
The governor's brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, and his family were among those who benefited from the special care, the insider said. They were screened several times during the pandemic's early stages. The two sources claim that the governor's mother, Matilda Cuomo, and at least one of his sisters were also able to take advantage of the state-run tests.
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Chris Cuomo revealed that he had tested positive for the virus on March 31 of last year. The Washington Post had previously reported that the governor's office effectively let well-connected citizens cut the line to decide if they had been infected with a deadly virus ravaging the state. This claim does not bore well for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is facing his most serious political challenge ever, with several of his fellow elected New York Democrats asking for his resignation in the wake of numerous sexual harassment allegations and concerns about his administration's treatment of the virus-related deaths of nursing home patients.
The State Assembly launched an impeachment probe into all issues this week, while the state attorney general launched a new investigation, and federal investigators are looking into the nursing home situation. The discovery of favorable tests could contribute to the Cuomo administration's increasingly difficult situation, New York Times reported.
State law restricts officials from using their power to receive or threaten to obtain "privileges or exemptions" for themselves or others. Cuomo's spokesman, Richard Azzopardi, did not expressly deny that the administration had given anybody preferential consideration while not attempting to refute the notion.
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The latest allegations could contribute to Cuomo's dilemma
Many New Yorkers who thought they might have been subjected to the virus were faced with physicians, hospital administrators, and health officials identified as a confused and troubled state testing system as the behind-the-scenes campaign to procure samples for those with access to the governor and the administration unfolded. As a result, there was general dissatisfaction and fear for many people that an infection was going undetected.
The state-run Wadsworth Center in Albany was for a time the only facility in the state that was allowed to conduct virus testing, with the federal government struggling to satisfy the need for testing and New York being the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic. And back then, the Wadsworth lab could only process a couple of hundred samples at a time.
Officials from the Cuomo administration said that in March 2020, public nurses were sent to private homes in New Rochelle to test people who had signs or had been in close contact with COVID-19. In a statement to The Hill, Richard Azzopardi, a senior adviser to the governor, called the accusations "insincere attempts to rewrite the past."
Meanwhile, Gary Holmes, a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health, said that asking those questions would essentially require "professionals who take an oath to protect a patient's privacy to violate the oath and risk their ethics."
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