Cuomo Faulted for Pandemic Leadership but Not for Nursing Home Deaths

A long-awaited review of New York State’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declined to fault him for the thousands of people who died of Covid-19 at nursing homes.

The report said the nursing home deaths in New York were largely consistent with national outcomes, but it nonetheless criticized Mr. Cuomo’s decision to centralize the state’s pandemic response in his office as “a significant and unnecessary mistake.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul commissioned the review, which was conducted by the Olson Group, a consulting firm, after she succeeded Mr. Cuomo in 2021. The purpose was to scrutinize New York’s handling of a crisis that shuttered businesses, strained social services and relegated millions of children to remote learning.

Investigators found that Mr. Cuomo’s consolidation of authority led to a troubling lack of coordination within his administration. While crediting the administration’s timely release of information to the public at daily press briefings, the investigators also noted that doing so without internal coordination had led to confusion.

Mr. Cuomo, in a statement on Friday, made no apologies for his leadership.

“We all lived through this,” he said, “and no rational person can believe that a coordinated centralized response is inferior to having decisions made by a gaggle of faceless bureaucrats.”

The report’s release came as Mr. Cuomo faces a new round of scrutiny over his handling of the pandemic, most recently from congressional Republicans on a House subcommittee that he testified before behind closed doors this week.