New York state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker resigns

New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker speaks at an event

New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker speaks during a press conference in January in New York City.Mary Altaffer | AP Photo

New York — New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker has submitted his resignation, Gov. Kathy Hochul said today.

Hochul thanked Zucker for his service to the state, but said she agreed with his decision to step down. She said Zucker will stay on as commissioner until Hochul choses his replacement.

“I think I made it very clear on my first day in office that I’d be looking to build a new team,” Hochul said during a press conference in New York City. “I am building that team. There’ll be other changes forthcoming.”

Hochul has said previously that she’d take 45 days to assess department heads like Zucker and determine whether to retain them or replace them.

In his resignation letter, Zucker said the time is right for him to leave.

“Though we continue to address new quagmires related to the pandemic, from issues of booster shots to legal challenges regarding vaccine mandates, I believe that in our state the most difficult aspects of this may be behind us,” he wrote.

For much of the Covid-19 pandemic, Zucker was one of the major public faces of the state’s response. He was a close ally of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and appeared with him regularly during Cuomo’s daily Covid briefings.

But he was also associated with some of the most controversial aspects of New York’s response to the pandemic. Zucker was a vocal defender of a March 2020 order from the Cuomo administration that required nursing homes to admit medically stable patients who had Covid in an effort to free up hospital beds.

At the time, state officials were worried about running out of hospital space. Critics have blamed the order for contributing to the spread of Covid in nursing homes and even leading to increased deaths.

The order was in effect until May 2020.

Experts have said the simple notion that by sending Covid-19 patients to nursing homes Cuomo flooded them with virus and caused thousands of unnecessary deaths does not hold up.

Zucker said numerous times Covid entered nursing homes mainly through staff members bringing the illness in from the outside.

Zucker was also involved in the months of stonewalling by the Cuomo administration over the full number of nursing home deaths in the state. Officials had been providing a number that was over 40% too low until pressure, including a report from the New York attorney general, prompted the release of the full count.

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