Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent almost $453 million during the COVID-19 pandemic stockpiling medical equipment such as ventilators that have almost entirely gone unused, a damning new audit by the state comptroller found.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found that only three items out of thousands purchased by the former governor’s office were ever sent out to hospitals, according to the report.
“New York state bought hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of medical equipment at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and x-ray machines, that now sits unused in storage facilities across the state, missing recommended maintenance and costing taxpayers storage expenses,” DiNapoli wrote in a statement.
The audit found that DOH’s stockpile, called the medical emergency response cache, grew from around 4,800 pieces of equipment before the pandemic, to 252,000 items now.
Of the roughly 248,000 pieces of equipment purchased during the pandemic, only three were ever deployed, the auditors found after reviewing databases supposed to keep track of the items.
The auditors also visited the warehouses and found some items were missing.
“DOH officials said that it was possible that they were put into use at some point and not recorded,” the report noted.
Despite a special committee within the DOH being charged with figuring out what to do with the stockpile in 2021, much of the equipment remains untouched and going to waste in state warehouses.
The auditors noted that the health department refused to provide documents providing details about how decisions were made about what to do with the stockpile.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
In March 2020, Cuomo’s office took over leading the pandemic response for the state. Responding to an uptick in hospitalizations and fear that the crisis could overwhelm the state’s hospitals, Cuomo’s administration gave consultancy firm McKinsey & Company $5.1 million to tell it how much equipment to purchase for its stockpile.
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi, who served in the administration at the time, said McKinsey overestimated how much equipment would be needed.
What followed was a mad scramble for equipment that Azzopardi blames, in part, on the first Trump administration’s decision not to centralize procurement.
“It was a race to the bottom that drove prices up, but time was of the essence and the law recognizes that in these situations the normal procurement process doesn’t work,” Azzopardi said noting that the overestimate was a good thing, because it meant the state was doing better at curtailing the virus’ spread.
“You can Monday morning quarterback now, but then we were looking to save lives and doing nothing wasn’t an option,” Azzopardi added.
He also cast doubt on the accuracy of DiNapoli’s numbers, claiming the administration sent plenty of supplies to hospitals.
Health Department spokesperson Marissa Crary, in a statement, tried to distance the agency from the purchases, noting that they were Cuomo’s office’s “purview” at the time.
The DOH statement also called the Comptroller’s findings “documentation discrepancies” and defended its handling of the stockpile.
“The Department regularly reviews and maintains all equipment currently available in the Emergency Medical Stockpile, takes actionable measures as appropriate, and maintains transparent documentation of these measures,” the spokesperson wrote.
The auditors noted in their report that 90% of the equipment in the warehouse that required maintenance was past due and that there’s not been a contract in place to maintain the stockpile for at least a year.
The comptroller’s office also pointed out that the health department couldn’t even access the inventory for the vast majority of the stockpile on its own. The auditors had to get inventory records maintained by a contractor that runs the warehouse for the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, an entirely separate agency.
During the scramble, Cuomo accepted a donation of 1,000 ventilators from China. Last year it was revealed that the gift was set up in part by Linda Sun, a staffer accused of spying for the Chinese government.
A firm with connections to Sun billed the state $700,000 for handling the logistics of shipping the gifted ventilators, the indictment against the former aid alleged.
DiNapoli’s audit shows that only 51 pieces of equipment were donated during the pandemic, meaning the Chinese ventilators were likely never counted as part of the stockpile.
