Cuomo Health Chief Tied to COVID Nursing Home Death Accusations Is Hired by CDC

The New York state health commissioner who resigned under fire for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic quietly landed a key job with the U.S. government earlier this year.

Dr. Howard Zucker was named deputy director of global health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January, according to the CDC website.

The position gives him "broad operating authority and responsibility for overall planning, direction, and management of global strategy and programs across CDC," according to his bio on the agency's website.

Activist Tracey Alvino — whose father died in April 2020 after contracting COVID-19 in a Long Island, New York, rehabilitation center — angrily told The Messenger on Friday that Zucker "got a cushy government job instead of accountability."

Alvino, a director of the Voices for Seniors advocacy group, accused Zucker of playing a role in the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes and having "falsified health data that was being used in real-time to make decisions."

"He should be in prison, not promoted," she said.

"My family will never recover from the way my father, a veteran, died and it's partially his fault."

Alvino also bitterly said of Zucker's new job, "The globe's health just got a lot worse if he's in charge of it."

Also Friday, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers called for the CDC to fire Zucker, Fox News Digital reported.

Stefanik accused Zucker of being "responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of New York seniors" and of leading a "cover-up" of nursing home fatalities.

Neither the CDC nor Zucker returned requests for comment from The Messenger.

Zucker, 63, faced bipartisan pressure to step down as New York's top health official after an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James found that Department of Health data undercounted the number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19 by more than 55%.

The DOH publicly acknowledged 1,229 deaths in nursing homes during the first wave of the pandemic, according to a report released by James in January 2021.

But adding the number of residents who died after being transferred to hospitals pushed the total to 1,914, James said.

Zucker was also tied to a March 25, 2020, DOH memo that told nursing homes to readmit "medically stable" residents discharged from hospitals following treatment for COVID-19.

Critics blamed the directive for spreading the disease among highly vulnerable seniors and an under-pressure Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally rescinded the order seven weeks later.

In May 2021, Zucker was further tarnished by a Washington Post report that revealed COVID-19 tests were privately administered to Cuomo's relatives and other well-connected "specials," some of whom were tested in their Manhattan penthouses.

The identities of the VIPs were closely held by a Zucker assistant and hidden in records through the use of aliases, initials or numbers, the Post said.

Zucker — who was appointed by Cuomo in 2015 — resigned in September 2021, a little more than a month after Cuomo quit to avoid impeachment over a sexual harassment scandal.

Neither the CDC nor Zucker returned requests for comment from The Messenger.

Before being hired by the CDC, Zucker worked as a visiting research professor at New York University's School of Global Health, according to his CDC bio.

Zucker's hiring was first reported by the New York Post in a Tuesday column by former U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year.

He said Zucker "failed miserably" as health commissioner and "should be permanently tossed as far out of government as possible."