Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that nursing home staff that refuse to comply with a new rule ordering biweekly coronavirus testing “shouldn’t work” in that facility.
“Oh, that’s a problem. If the nursing home agrees, and the local government agrees and we do have the tests and the nursing home staff person just doesn’t want to take the test? Even though it’s available? Uh, I’d have to check with the lawyers,” Cuomo told reporters during his daily coronavirus briefing in Binghamton.
“But I would say, with counsel’s opinion: then a person shouldn’t work in a nursing home. We can’t make you take a test, but you don’t have a right to work in a nursing home either and if the test is available, and you can take the test and there’s no cost to you to take the test, why wouldn’t you take the test?”
“If you don’t want to take a test, why would we let you work in a nursing home and possibly endanger a very vulnerable population?” he added.
Cuomo announced a new executive order Sunday requiring all nursing home workers to be tested twice weekly for the deadly virus in the effort to suppress the rising death count among the Empire State’s most vulnerable.
The measure comes several weeks after the state Health Department reversed a policy that allowed COVID-19 positive, asymptomatic healthcare employees to work with virus-positive residents.
The new state guidelines were revised to restrict coronavirus positive personnel from returning to work for 14 days following quarantine, following a Post story that exposed an upstate nursing home that was allowing sick workers to treat patients.
“We will work with any region that says they don’t have the capacity for two tests per week, it’s not an uncommon complaint, many of the nursing homes are saying it’s unnecessary and it’s a burden. I understand that it is burdensome, but I think that we have to do everything that we can do and I don’t think it’s unnecessarily burdensome,” the governor added when asked what will happen if there are not even enough tests available for facilities to comply with the mandate.
Nursing homes have until Wednesday, May 13 to submit a plan to DOH analyzing their present capabilities to perform mass testing.
The state regulates 613 private and public facilities, and require them to submit daily reports tracking virus case and death counts.
The Cuomo administration has come under fire by lawmakers and family members for permitting a policy allowing individuals that are coronavirus positive into nursing homes.
Officials barred hospitals from sending patients who have the virus into facilities on Sunday, but operators are not allowed to deny entry based on a person having the infectious disease.
There have been roughly 5,300 deaths in Empire State nursing homes as of Tuesday’s tallies recorded by DOH.