One year ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) made a decision that would come to haunt him.

COVID-19 was pounding New York while much of the country watched the crisis that was to soon overtake their states as well. Taking advantage of emergency powers that allowed him to make pandemic policy unilaterally, Cuomos Department of Health informed nursing homes in late March that they could not deny admission to patients discharged from hospitals solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.

The move was meant to free up space in hospitals that were quickly becoming overwhelmed. But it had deadly consequences.

Nursing homes became the lethal epicenter of New Yorks pandemic. As of March, more than 15,000 New Yorkers have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities making up roughly one-third of the states total deaths.

They were desperately trying to solve a hospital problem, and they created a nursing home problem with what should really have been foreseeable consequences, said Michael Gusmano, a health policy professor at the Rutgers University School of Health.

A few months later, Cuomo reversed his order. But he also made another fateful mistake: He tried to cover up the devastatingly high death toll in nursing homes.

The Cuomo administration has defended its decision by playing on public dislike of former President Donald Trump . It has argued that it withheld the data because it didnt want to provide Trump with ammunition to further take aim at New York.

But other Democratic governors, who were also under fire from Trump, confronted the same problems and made different decisions, undercutting Cuomos excuses. Cuomos failures are especially glaring when paired with the fact that he wrote a book in October touting his leadership during the pandemic.