The coronavirus infected 10,311 care workers, killing 32, who are forced to staff New York state group homes with a practice of co-mingling healthy and sick residents, according to a Washington Examiner investigation.
According to multiple whistleblowers who spoke with the Washington Examiner, employees were deceived, intimidated, and threatened into staffing infectious facilities within New York’s 7,000-home network, which had the same policies as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s nursing homes. New, infected residents were allowed into healthy homes, but the disease was spread throughout the network by staff who rotated in and out of infected homes.
CUOMO CREATED COVID-POSITIVE GROUP HOME DEATHTRAPS, WORKERS SAY
The New York Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, which operates the group homes, also reported 552 resident deaths and 6,382 infections as of March 10. Care statistics were provided to the Washington Examiner in an email Friday.
“I know one staff member who volunteered for a 24/7 lockdown and now is in the hospital in serious condition with COVID,” Jeff Monsour, a care worker under OPWDD, said. “I know several others with COVID. All staff who contacted COVID should immediately file a worker’s compensation claim because no one knows the long-term side effects from contracting COVID-19.”
Monsour sent a barrage of emails to state officials, begging for a “common sense emergency COVID-19 plan that would reduce the spread” between caregivers and residents. An April 10 memo from the OPWDD directed that “no individual shall be denied re-admission or admission to a Certified Residential Facility based solely on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”
“I was completely ignored, and that cost the lives of disabled individuals and brave direct support professionals,” Monsour said.
The OPWDD told the Washington Examiner that infected residents were placed into quarantine facilities to separate them from the healthy population. However, Monsour and numerous other employees said this is untrue. Residents mingle with each other, using common restrooms and the kitchen. Sometimes, homes were locked down for weeks, with care workers quarantined inside sleeping on air mattresses in the living room.
Care workers are not informed before their shifts that they will be working in an infected home. The standard protocol is for management to call employees once they arrive at their normal group home to start their shift.
“It appears only if residents contract COVID do lockdowns take place,” Monsour said. “If the staff have COVID but they are asymptomatic, they are supposed to report to work!”
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Cuomo, who is currently facing a raft of sexual harassment allegations, is also under increasing pressure to resign over a nursing home scandal that claimed the lives of 15,000 patients, in part due to a policy of forcing sick individuals back into clean homes. An initial report said only 6,432 people had died.
