- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had a state doctor perform Covid tests on his family members during the early stage of the pandemic.
- Those receiving preferential treatment included Cuomo’s brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.
- The report of preferential treatment for family members comes amidst calls for Cuomo to resign following accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct.
NEW YORK, New York: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had a state doctor perform Covid tests on his family members during the early stage of the pandemic, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Those receiving preferential treatment included Cuomo’s brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.
The report of preferential treatment for family members comes amidst calls for Cuomo to resign, following accusation of sexual harassment and misconduct from at least eight women.
A second scandal Cuomo is enmeshed in involves the alleged under-reporting of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.
Cuomo, age 63, has repeatedly said he would not resign, after denying the allegations.
The Washington Post has reported that a top state doctor visited the homes of Cuomo family members and close associates to administer Covid tests.
“We should avoid insincere efforts to rewrite the past. In the early days of this pandemic, when there was a heavy emphasis on contact tracing, we were absolutely going above and beyond to get people testing,” Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said in a statement to Reuters, following the publishing of the Post article.
Efforts to test people involved “in some instances going to people’s homes – and door to door in places like New Rochelle – to take samples from those believed to have been exposed to COVID in order to identify cases and prevent additional ones,” the statement added.
Azzopardi went on to say that those assisted included, “members of the general public, including legislators, reporters, state workers and their families, who feared they had contracted the virus and had the capability to further spread it.”
