New York Gov. Kathy Hochul adds 12,000 COVID-19 deaths to count after Cuomo was accused of a nursing-home cover-up

• Just two days into her administration, Gov. Kathy Hochul released new COVID-19 death numbers.
• Hochul updated the state's tally by adding 12,000 more deaths than were previously reported.
• "Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration," Hochul said on MSNBC.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York acknowledged an additional 12,000 COVID-19 deaths in New York state that her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, did not, The Associated Press reported.

The new governor said the new tally would increase transparency after Cuomo was accused of covering up COVID-19 deaths in state nursing homes during the beginning of the pandemic.

Beyond the sexual-harassment allegations that preceded Cuomo's resignation, the nursing-home death count became one of several scandals that plagued his third term.

"We're now releasing more data than had been released before publicly so people know the nursing-home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what's being displayed by the CDC," Hochul said Wednesday on MSNBC.

"There's a lot of things that weren't happening, and I'm going to make them happen," she added. "Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration."

Before her bombshell 165-page report that found Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, New York Attorney General Letitia James accused the former governor of undercounting nursing-home deaths by as much as 50%.

Cuomo's top aide at the time, Melissa DeRosa, told lawmakers in a leaked call that the administration was sitting on the tally of nursing-home-related deaths as a preemptive measure against a federal investigation urged by President Donald Trump.

A March 25, 2020, executive order by Cuomo mandated that nursing-home patients who were hospitalized with COVID-19 should be discharged back to nursing homes, as long as the providers could take adequate care of them.

The Cuomo administration said it was simply following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

Hospital capacity was a primary concern at the time, but the order left nursing-home staff in a bind, particularly with the potential for the recently hospitalized residents to spread the virus if they were still within the window of contagiousness.

Cuomo accused Trump, Fox News, and the New York Post of conspiring against him by running with the story.

Questions remain over whether Hochul will fire Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner who was implicated in the attorney general's report on nursing homes.