Mourning families gathered in Cobble Hill on Sunday to mark the five-year anniversary of COVID-19 and advocate for accountability in the wake of pandemic nursing home deaths.
Surrounded by political candidates from across the spectrum, families stood united in their opposition to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic’s toll on New York’s nursing homes.
The group, which included six Democratic mayoral candidates — City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, and former City Comptroller Scott Stringer — was joined by Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in condemning Cuomo’s actions. These candidates focused on an order issued by Cuomo’s state Health Department in the spring of 2020 that allowed COVID-positive patients to be readmitted into nursing homes.
Cuomo, who recently entered the race for mayor, has come under growing scrutiny for his handling of the nursing home crisis during the height of the pandemic. While he and his office have maintained that there is no evidence the controversial order contributed to the high death toll, critics point to the 15,000 nursing home deaths in New York as evidence of its devastating impact.
For the families, the issue remains personal.
“You need to face us and apologize,” said Peter Arbeeny, whose father Norman died in 2020 after being discharged from Cobble Hill Health Center. “If you’re going to lead, you have to lead for all of us.”
Standing beside the memorial — a hearse adorned with flowers, a wall of photographs, and a casket — candidates and families alike demanded that Cuomo take responsibility. The memorial marked the loss of 89-year-old Norman Arbeeny, who died just two weeks after his release from the facility. His family’s grief has not lessened in the years since, and they remain adamant that Cuomo owes them an apology.
“I would like to say that Governor Cuomo team reached out to our lawyers over a month ago, trying to broker a meeting with our family and our advocacy at his law firm. We respectfully declined because we don’t think that we should be meeting in a law office,” Arbeeny said. “So, we invited him to our father’s house, as we did five years ago when he was a governor, as we did four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, and one year ago. He’s been invited to our father’s house for five years.”
Still battling with the weight of their monumental loss, family after family at Sunday’s gathering — held outside Arbeeny’s family home — shared their horror stories as they gripped the photos of their loved ones and even small urns containing their ashes. Some even wept as they recalled the last moments of their parents and grandparents.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose father also died during the pandemic, recalled the last moments she spent with him.
“This is not politics for me. This is personal for me,” Adams said. “We decided to take Dad to North Shore Hospital, and that was the last time that I looked into his beautiful eyes because they would not allow my sister and I to go into the hospital. He was admitted at the door at the outside of the parking lot in a wheelchair on March 26, 2020, and I remember looking at him and taking his hand and saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, Daddy, we’re going to be back and we’re going to see you soon.’ And he looked up at me as if to say, ‘Don’t leave me.’”
Lander echoed Adams’ sentiments, emphasizing that the struggle for accountability transcends party lines.
“This is not about partisan politics, but it is about accountability,” he said. “And it is not too much to ask Andrew Cuomo to meet with families.”
Despite the emotional outpouring, Cuomo’s campaign defended the former governor. A spokesperson insisted that the nursing home policy has been politicized and that there is no evidence to support claims that it caused additional deaths.
“More than 2 million Americans died as a result of the COVID pandemic, and our hearts break for the families of every person who lost a loved one,” said Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi. “But unfortunately, as the DOJ IG confirmed, that pain has been weaponized for purely electoral purposes for years.”
“Being mayor of the greatest city in the world is a tremendous undertaking that requires experience, a proven record of accomplishment and management capacity – traits none of these extreme MAGA or fringe DSA mayoral candidates have,” Azzopardi’s statement went on.
Yet, for the families who continue to grieve — many of whom refer to themselves as “The Cuomo COVID Orphans” — the call for justice remains urgent.
In a statement Monday, the group called for corrections to a report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General. In a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi, they urged action on multiple errors and misleading statements made in the report, which was issued during the final days of the Biden Administration.
The families argue that the DOJ IG’s conclusion, which deemed Cuomo’s March 25, 2020, nursing home directive “largely consistent” with federal guidelines, is inaccurate and fails to reflect the devastating impact of the policy.
“Given Cuomo’s reported deception on material facts, the IG authors should have been very skeptical of anything the Cuomo administration produced. At a bare minimum, unproven or disputed statements by former Governor Cuomo and his administration should not have been uncritically accepted as true,” the group said in a statement. “The IG report remains nearly silent (only footnote 14 & 89 makes mention of death data manipulation but does not seem to use it in context of the paragraph’s point) on the evidence that the Cuomo administration’s falsification and manipulation of death data, leaving a reader to think these dubious statements are undisputed.”
“The Cuomo COVID Orphans deserve the truth, and you, Attorney General Bondi, can help us finally get it.”
A version of this story first appeared on AMNY
