NY state workers who travel to COVID-19 hot spots won't get paid sick leave, Cuomo says

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Saturday that he issued an executive order denying paid sick leave due to the coronavirus to state employees who voluntarily travel to Florida and other high-risk states.

The decision came on a day when Cuomo announced that at least five people who attended a Westchester County high school graduation ceremony have tested positive for the virus after a student returned from a trip to Florida.

Florida is seeing a surge in coronavirus cases as New York’s infection level remains low.

The governor also was the focus of a Manhattan demonstration Saturday, with protesters pointing to New York's policies on nursing homes and rehab centers as the reason residents of those facilities died of COVID-19.

The new executive order applies to travel to the same eight states with high infection rates covered under quarantine restrictions that New York, New Jersey and Connecticut put in place Thursday. Travelers from those states must self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival in the tristate area, the governors said.

In addition to Florida, the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Utah are currently covered by the quarantine.

“If we are going to maintain the progress we've seen, we need everyone to take personal responsibility," Cuomo said in a statement explaining the new executive order on sick leave.

State and Westchester County health officials are working to identify anyone who attended the June 20 Horace Greeley High School drive-in graduation ceremony at the Chappaqua Metro-North station and other events associated with the graduation, a news release said. Students from nearby high schools attended at least one of the other events, the state said.

The student who traveled to Florida had contact at the ceremony with the other four people who tested positive, the state said.

“We're prepared to do the aggressive testing and contact tracing required to slow and ultimately control any potential clusters of new cases like the one in Westchester County,” Cuomo said in a statement.

The five who tested positive are self-isolating, and anyone who attended any graduation-related events also should self-isolate, the state said. 

Video of the graduation ceremony shows students and school officials speaking from the podium without masks, in front of other officials, some of whom wore masks and some of whom didn’t. Their chairs were spaced apart, but it is unclear at what distance. Students did not walk up to the podium to receive diplomas; instead photos of the students flashed on a screen.

Honking noises indicated that at least some guests were in their cars.

The state health department on June 14 issued guidelines for graduations that includes social distancing, a limit on the number of attendees and the wearing of face coverings. The state is investigating if those guidelines were followed, the release said.

Protesters decry Cuomo policy failures

Outside Cuomo’s Manhattan office Saturday, about 50 demonstrators, nearly all of whom had loved ones die of coronavirus-related causes at New York nursing homes and rehab centers, protested over what the group said was a series of policy failures that led to the deaths, including the governor’s March 25 order requiring the facilities to accept coronavirus-infected patients — who in turn infected others.

The governor’s office said it was following federal guidance, which indicated that nursing homes could accept patients with COVID-19, as long as those facilities could provide adequate care, including separating sick residents, screening staff and taking other measures to prevent spread.

Cuomo's order was the only one in the nation to bar testing of incoming patients to check whether they had been newly infected or potentially were still contagious, according to ProPublica. In the weeks that followed, the coronavirus killed more than 6,000 people in New York nursing homes.

According to The Associated Press, as many as 4,500 patients with the virus were sent to nursing homes in New York.

‪“CUOMO KILLED MY MOTHER,” read a sign held by Haydee Pabey of Westchester, a police officer whose mother, Elba, died April 6 of COVID-19 at age 72 in a nursing home.

‪“They are not numbers! They are human beings,” said Theresa Sari of New Jersey, whose mom, Maria Sachse, 60, died of COVID-19 at a nursing home in Island Park.

‪“Anyone with common sense could have predicted the deaths of all these people — vulnerable people,” she said of Cuomo’s order.

Cuomo administration spokesman Jack Sterne said in response that the "State DOH [Department of Health] followed federal guidance that said nursing homes can’t discriminate against patients simply for having COVID.”

Cuomo reversed his directive in May.

Sterne said underpinning the state’s March 25 action was a state law that says a nursing home should only accept residents for whom it can provide adequate care, including, Sterne said, infection control.

Sterne said the nursing homes were told to treat any patients discharged from hospitals as presumed COVID-19 patients, isolate them and take other precautions. Coronavirus testing capacity at the time was severely limited, he said.

The demonstrators also criticized Cuomo for failing to help nursing homes get sufficient personal protective equipment — “it’s not our job,” he said in April — and granting unusual protections from lawsuits to nursing home operators over failure to protect residents from coronavirus death or sickness. The state said it provided PPE to nursing homes, but the timing of when those supplies were made available was unclear.

'… A continued, steady decline' in virus figures

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone called for the state to allow the Long Island Ducks to return to Bethpage Ballpark with fans in Phase 4.

The Ducks have submitted a plan to play 70 games while limiting the ballpark to 25% capacity, which would allow about 1,500 fans to watch the independent baseball team in Central Islip.

Also Saturday, Cuomo's office announced that the number of New Yorkers hospitalized with COVID-19 and who died from the disease declined again, and the infection rate of those tested for the coronavirus dipped below 1%. “Today's numbers show a continued, steady decline in our hospitalization and death rates, and proves that a response based on science, not politics, is [the] only way to defeat this virus,” Cuomo said in a news release.

On Long Island, 0.9% of those tested on Friday received a positive result. Statewide, 0.96% were positive.

In Nassau County, 41 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday, bringing the total to 41,725. In Suffolk County, 45 people received a positive result, with a total of 41,253.

Statewide, there were 703 additional positive results, for a total of 391,923.

Thirteen New Yorkers died Friday from COVID-19, down from 14 on Thursday and lower than the three-day average of 16 deaths that Cuomo on Friday said was the state’s lowest death toll since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in March. In early April, nearly 800 New Yorkers were dying of COVID-19 on some days.

Bellone announced three more COVID-19 deaths in Suffolk, bringing the county’s total to 1,978. In Nassau, one person died of COVID-19, for a total of 2,182, according to the state health department.

The number of COVID-19 hospitalizations fell to 908, down from 951 on Thursday, the news release said.

With John Asbury

By David Olson

david.olson@newsday.com,matthew.chayes@newsday.com@DavidOlson11,

David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.