Andrew Cuomo refused to send patients to EMPTY USNS Comfort even as NYC rocked under Covid crisis
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: At the height of the pandemic, a US Navy admiral pleaded with the Cuomo administration to allow patients to be transported to the hospital ship anchored in the Hudson River, which was almost completely empty, but his pleas were dismissed with "politics and paranoia." Vice Admiral Mike Dumont pleaded with the government to take action in a collection of emails recently obtained by activist Peter Arbeeny.
In the spring of 2020, with NYC's hospitals overcrowded with seriously ill Covid patients, and just days after Governor Andrew Cuomo's infamous executive order to transfer Covid patients to nursing homes, which critics claim led to thousands of deaths, the Trump administration dispatched the USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed ship, to make room for patients with non-Covid diseases, the New York Post reports.
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What did Vice Admiral Mike Dumont say?
“We could use some help from your office,” he wrote in an April 7, 2020 missive to Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa. “The Governor asked us to permit the use of USNS COMFORT to treat patients without regard to their COVID status and we have done so. Right now we only have 37 patients aboard the ship. Further, we are treating only 83 patients at the Javits Events Center," wrote Dumont.
2,500 beds were available at the Javits Center. “We have been trying for days to get the Health Evacuation Coordination Center (HECC) to transfer more patients to us but with little success. We are told by NYC officials the HECC falls under the State’s Department of Health,” the email continued. “Our greatest concern is two-fold: helping take the strain off local hospitals, and not wasting high-end capabilities the US military has brought to NYC. We appreciate the help,” he further wrote.
The admiral's message was quickly relayed by DeRosa to top state officials COVID, including Howard Zucker, the city's health commissioner, and Michael Kopy, director of the New York State Office of Emergency Management. The state's largest health care organization, Northwell Health, is privately run by Michael J Dowling.
Another federal facility was established at the Jacob Javits Center in Midtown. Both were known to sit empty for most of their operating life, with city, state, and federal officials blaming each other at the time.
The blame games
Speaking on behalf of the government, Kopy got defensive and blamed The Comfort for having too many rules. “[HECC] are following criteria established by the comfort for admission to the comfort as well as criteria for the javits,” he wrote.
Sensing a plot, DeRosa switched to politics, warning the group to be vigilant and charging Dumont with attempting to frame Team Cuomo for the empty facilities. “They are setting this up to say that we are the reason the ship and javitts [sic] are empty –I’m going to loop you guys on the email. we need to make clear in writing that what he has written here is not true,” she told Kopy, Zucker and Dowling.
Dumont, who will retire in 2021, told The Post that he was discouraged by DeRosa's response after hearing about it. “It is discouraging to learn they completely misread and misunderstood the request for assistance,” he said. “We had neither the time nor the interest in setting anyone up for blame." He continued, “My request was solely to highlight the low numbers of patients being treated and ask for their help in better utilizing the military medical resources available. There was nothing in the request that was not truthful, and we never claimed anyone was preventing the transfer of patients to treatment sites provided by the US military. How they reached these conclusions is both perplexing and discouraging.”
Team Cuomo
Team Cuomo has long maintained that the ship itself was primarily a fed photo opportunity and that strict admissions policies were the real cause of why it sat largely empty. Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said, “The fed’s own bureaucratic rules prevented the ship from being utilized — but by the time it arrived and finally allowed COVID patients on board, fears about the hospitals getting overburdened had largely passed as we increased capacity, balanced patient loads between facilities and New Yorkers banded together to crush the curve."
Officials exchanged a flood of messages just days after Cuomo issued an order requiring nursing homes to admit COVID -positive residents. The March 25 order has caused at least 15,000 deaths, critics say. Team Cuomo defended the order, saying hospitals were overcrowded.
The state Department of Health noted in a memo dated April 7 that the "USNS Comfort cannot support patients with these conditions at this time," before listing 45 different conditions, such as "known pregnancy," "all neurosurgical procedures," and "any immunosuppressed patients."
“These limits are based upon limited pharmacy capacity, unique medical equipment requirements the ship does not have, or lack of medical specialists in those fields onboard the ship capable of handling those types of patients,” Dumont said.
Controlling the politics
Following a pattern of behavior by top Cuomo aides of "controlling the politics of the moment rather than actually fixing the problem," said Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who reviewed the email exchange. “Everything was a conspiracy to attack the administration and I don’t think that is what the admiral or the US government intended,” Kim added.
On March 30, 2020, The Comfort made its grand entrance in New York City. Due to the uncontrolled spread of new infections, overcrowding of hospitals by patients, and lack of supplies, first responders were forced to carry trash bags. Ultimately, however, the bureaucratic burden proved too great, so only 182 patients could be treated on the ship and only 1,095 people at Javits.
“This was Trump’s federal government, which constantly played politics with everything related to New York and COVID and so it yes, it should shock no one that we were skeptical of their motives. As is evident from the emails, the red tape the admiral claimed prevented patient inflow did not exist. If his feelings were hurt, we’re sorry about that,” Azzopardi said.