The Washington Post is citing sources who revealed that a state doctor was sent by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) administration to test his family members for the coronavirus in their home.
The doctor, Eleanor Adams, is now a top adviser to the state health commissioner.
"As part of the program, a state lab immediately processed the results of those who were tested, the people said, even as average New Yorkers were struggling to get tested in the early days of the pandemic because of a scarcity of resources," said the Post. "Initially, the lab was only capable of running several hundred tests a day for a state with 19 million residents."
The use of state funds to benefit one's family is a serious ethical concern.
Cuomo's much younger brother Chris was one of those who benefited from testing after he was diagnosed in March 2020. The state health official came to the CNN anchor's home in the Hamptons to swab him and his family.
During the early days of the pandemic, getting a test was difficult because labs hadn't developed a test kit for several months. Once one was created, there was accidental contamination at the CDC site where the tests were created, delaying test kits even further.
"We should avoid insincere efforts to rewrite the past. In the early days of this pandemic, when there was a heavy emphasis on contact tracing, we were absolutely going above and beyond to get people testing — including in some instances going to people's homes — and door to door in places like New Rochelle — to take samples from those believed to have been exposed to COVID in order to identify cases and prevent additional ones," Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said in a statement.
"Among those we assisted were members of the general public, including legislators, reporters, state workers and their families who feared they had contracted the virus and had the capability to further spread it," he also said.
