Embattled state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker will step down from his position as soon as a replacement can be found, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday.
Zucker was a key figure in the administration of disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo, where critics charged he played a central role in its efforts to minimize and disguise the pandemic’s death toll across the state and in its nursing homes.
“He understands that, in this time, I’ve wanted to take the first 45 days to assemble a new team going forward,” Hochul said, announcing Zucker’s departure. “That process is ongoing, and he understands and he respects that.”
She added: “He also has an opportunity to move on to new ventures and I appreciate his his service.”
Hochul said that a search for a replacement is underway.
The soon-to-depart Zucker issued the controversial March 2020 order that required nursing homes to accept coronavirus-positive residents returning from hospitals, provided they were not critically ill. Zucker also barred nursing homes from testing the returning residents for the virus.
State officials at the time argued they were forced to make the call because of a shortage of beds in emergency rooms and intensive care units across the state — and insufficient testing capacity.
However, critics charged that the moves helped to spread the disease in nursing homes and other adult care facilities, which are home to populations that are uniquely vulnerable to the deadly virus.
The order was quietly rescinded in May after it ignited a firestorm.
An analysis done by The Empire Center, a conservative-leaning think tank, revealed that the order might have increased the death toll in nursing homes by as much as 1,000 people — predominantly in facilities upstate.
It also revealed that the virus was in such wide circulation in New York City and its suburbs that no statistical correlation could be drawn.
Those findings were later backed by a reporter from the New York State Bar Association.
Zucker and Cuomo defended the nursing home orders saying the facilities were obligated to provide care and to obtain the necessary protective equipment to shield their staffs and other residents from the virus.
However, the massive shortages of PPE made that impossible and it took state officials weeks to begin delivering the needed supplies, all as the death toll mounted.
They also came under fire for not allowing city nursing homes to send sick residents to two hospital ships that largely sat empty during the first wave of the pandemic.
The roiling questions about the handling of nursing homes cast a shadow over the boom in popularity that Cuomo enjoyed thanks, in large part, to his daily coronavirus press briefings, which became a national media sensation.
Off the newfound fame, Cuomo netted a $5 million deal that summer to write a memoir about his management of the pandemic: “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
As he sat down to write the book, his administration embarked on an effort to conceal the true toll of the coronavirus pandemic in the Empire State, particularly in its nursing homes.
Cuomo’s top aides — including his right-hand, Melissa DeRosa — ordered the state Health Department to exclude true estimates of the nursing home death toll from a widely criticized July report.
Additionally, Zucker’s Health Department provided incomplete tallies of coronavirus death counts from nursing homes for months, by refusing to release the tallies of residents who later died in nursing homes.
The Cuomo administration only released the complete figures after state Attorney General Letitia James released a report saying the Health Department’s count likely understated COVID-linked deaths at nursing home facilities by 50 percent.
Zucker’s incomplete counts obscured the connection between 1,900 COVID deaths and nursing homes in New York City alone.