Andrew Cuomo hasn’t seen his mom since start of COVID-19 pandemic
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that he still has not seen his mother since the coronavirus pandemic started in New York in March — and doesn’t plan to until it’s safe.
“I haven’t seen my mother since the start of it. Very close to my mother. Haven’t seen her in over 100 days,” Cuomo told reporters of his 88-year-old mom, Matilda, during his daily COVID-19 press briefing in Albany.
The governor said he hasn’t gone to see his mom “because I love my mother and I could get her sick,” and added, “When the health professional says, it’s safe for me to see my mother. I will see my mother.”
Cuomo made the comments after he was asked by a reporter when visitors will be allowed back in nursing homes across the state after they were barred in early March as the coronavirus crisis was mounting.
“When the health professional says, you can go into a nursing home, you can visit people in a nursing home and the reward outweighs the risk, we will change that rule,” said Cuomo.
“I’m not going to let people endanger people, because you could walk into a nursing home to visit your mother and bring in the virus that could affect my mother, who’s in the next room right?” Cuomo continued.
Cuomo noted, “Everybody agrees as soon as it is safe we will allow it, and the Department of Health is looking at it on a daily basis.”
The coronavirus has hit hard nursing home patients, resulting in more than 6,000 confirmed and presumed COVID-19 deaths in New York.
Cuomo recently said he would not put his own mother in a nursing home given the pandemic.