Posted on 03/24/2021 5:40:22 PM PDT by conservative98
High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor's relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Members of Cuomo's family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times, the sources said.
The medical officials enlisted to do the testing, which often took place at private residences, included Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and in August became a special adviser to Zucker. Adams conducted testing on Cuomo's brother Chris at his residence on Long Island, according to the two people.
"If their job was to go test an old lady down in New Rochelle, that’s one thing — that’s actually good," one of the people with knowledge of the matter said. "This was not that."
Others who were given priority testing include Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and his wife, as well as Patrick J. Foye, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and his wife. Members of the media, state legislators and their staff also were tested in similar fashion, although there is no indication those tests were done by high-level health department officials.
Officials in the Cuomo administration said the testing in those early days of the pandemic in March 2020 was not preferential, and they noted public nurses were being driven to private residences in New Rochelle — the site of the state's first outbreak — to test people who were symptomatic or who had been exposed to the virus.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesunion.com ...
They were known as "specials" or "VIPs." Last year, Gov. Cuomo arranged for his family (including CNN host & brother Chris Cuomo) to get home visits from NY health staffers who administered scarce covid-19 tests and rushed them to lab via state troopers. https://t.co/BY4HgawHx8— Amy Brittain (@AmyJBrittain) March 24, 2021
Separately, nurses working for the state were dispatched in two-person swabbing teams to test “dozens” of VIPs, some living in penthouses in Manhattan, according to one person with direct knowledge. Those tests were then driven to the Wadsworth lab for expedited processing.— Amy Brittain (@AmyJBrittain) March 24, 2021
Names of the "VIPs" and "specials" were closely held by an assistant working for state health commissioner Howard Zucker and obscured throughout the expedited testing process, often through the use of numbers or letter initials or even aliases in some cases.— Amy Brittain (@AmyJBrittain) March 24, 2021
And a tip of the hat to @Brendan_LyonsTU who broke this story earlier tonight: https://t.co/2u5Sw74N7j— Amy Brittain (@AmyJBrittain) March 24, 2021
Cuomo is a corrupt ahole that is better than everyone else so he thinks
Was probably just a misunderstanding ... he meant to have them all tested for STDs.
What’s the big deal? Hitler may have done a similar thing.(/s)
This is the Dem North; I believe that it will prove impossible to explain to the pols that this is unethical/immoral. It will simply not compute.
If yo can’t do things like this, then why even go into politics?
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