Tipsheet

DeSantis Responds to New York Nursing Home Scandal, Explains What (Successful) Approach Florida Took

The walls are closing in on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, no matter how many lies he tells about it, issued an executive action in March forcing long term care facilities to take in COVID-positive patients, thereby infecting the already vulnerable populations and killing thousands as a result.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis explained Monday he took a vastly differently approach in his state.

“[W]e in Florida, we had the exact opposite order. We said you can’t — the hospitals — send a COVID-positive nursing home resident back into the nursing home because that is the most vulnerable population and you obviously would put them in serious risk," he said. "But what we also did after the first few weeks, we established COVID-only nursing units so if you had somebody test positive at a nursing home, they could be safely transferred and isolated, recover, then go back, so that the other residents were protected."

Fox News's Tucker Carlson jumped in, saying it would be “fascinating” to figure out why New York went in the direction they did and DeSantis said he knew exactly why. 

"Around mid to late March, we were all given models saying you’re not going to have any hospital beds in five days. Every governor got those models," he recalled. "I questioned the assumptions under those models. I didn’t think that they were valid. I said I’m not going to construct our policy around that. But even if I was wrong, I would build more beds somewhere rather than throw these elderly people back into the fire of a nursing home where they could contaminate and infect a lot of other people. So it was just an important judgment that we were all called upon to make and I think Florida did it right and I think obviously other states took a different path."