Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said it was a mistake to send COVID-19 patients to nursing homes without taking the necessary precautions.
His comments came Friday during an interview of the Fox News show “America’s Newsroom.” They were in response to a question about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reasoning behind sending coronavirus patients to the nursing facilities.
“Well, first of all, it’s very important that people learn from mistakes,” Carson said. “I think it was clearly a mistake to be sending these people to the nursing homes without having done the necessary preparations in the nursing homes – teaching the staff in the nursing homes, providing the PPE in the nursing homes… That’s been done now and as you can see it’s dramatically made a difference.
“Obviously you don’t want to take a person with an infectious disease and concentrate them in a place that isn’t prepared to receive them.
Regarding Cuomo’s comments about following federal guidelines prohibiting discriminating against patients, Carson said: “Of course you’re not supposed to discriminate anybody. All the federal guidelines say that about everything. That’s a ridiculous argument. Obviously you want to accept people if you have provisions and have taken the appropriate safeguards.”
More than 5,300 New Yorkers living in nursing homes have died from the virus.
Cuomo last week rolled out new regulations to protect nursing home residents amid the pandemic, saying patients must test negative for COVID-19 before being readmitted to the facilities.