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Cuomo Accuses DeSantis of ‘Playing Politics’ with Coronavirus as Florida Cases Rise

New York governor Andrew Cuomo accused his Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, of “playing politics” with the coronavirus pandemic, now that numbers of cases are rising steadily in Florida. During the onset of the pandemic, Florida ordered travelers arriving from hard-hit New York to self-quarantine for two weeks. On Tuesday, Cuomo and the governors of Connecticut …

New York governor Andrew Cuomo accused his Florida counterpart, Ron DeSantis, of “playing politics” with the coronavirus pandemic, now that numbers of cases are rising steadily in Florida.

During the onset of the pandemic, Florida ordered travelers arriving from hard-hit New York to self-quarantine for two weeks. On Tuesday, Cuomo and the governors of Connecticut and New Jersey ordered travelers from Florida, Texas, and several other states to self-quarantine as case numbers rise throughout those states.

“Look at the numbers: you played politics with this virus and you lost,”  Cuomo said Wednesday on CNN, accusing other governors, including DeSantis, of mishandling the pandemic. “You told the people of your state…don’t worry about it, just open up, go about your business, this is all Democratic hyperbole. Oh really? Now you see twenty seven states with the numbers going up, you see the death projections going up….It was never politics, it was always science.”

DeSantis has maintained that while rising numbers of cases are concerning, those numbers do not take into account the age of patients. Younger patients tend to have fewer complications and hospitalizations from coronavirus.

“The folks in that [younger] age group, unless they have a real serious underlying condition, do not suffer the same types of clinical consequences or hospitalization or certainly covid-related fatalities that people in the older group would,” DeSantis said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Even though we had a lot of new tests at higher levels last week, we actually had fewer positive tests in our long-term care facilities than we had had.”

New York has seen a death rate of 8 percent from coronavirus, driven in part by outbreaks at nursing homes in the state. Among Floridians, 3 percent of coronavirus patients have died.

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