Since Democrats who control the legislature did not utilize their subpoena power to pursue an independent investigation into nursing home deaths, Republicans in the Senate and Assembly held an informal hearing on the issue over Zoom on Monday.

“This isn’t just about numbers,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said. “If there’s a second wave, if there’s resurgence, we need to have the right policies going forward.”

Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay mentioned that while the joint hearings of August 3 and August 10 were important, “they should not be the end of this conversation.”

Testimony was presented by, among others, Janice Dean, Fox News Senior Meteorologist, whose in-laws were both victims of the virus. Dean says she blames Governor Andrew Cuomo’s March 25 executive order for her in-laws’ contracting COVID-19.

The order issued by Cuomo disallowed nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit a patient solely on the basis of a positive COVID-19 test.

In emotional testimony, Dean told lawmakers about her in-laws.

“Mickey and Dee Newman were married 59 years and raised 3 children. They lived in the same four-story walk-up apartment in Brooklyn for almost 6 decades,” she said. “My husband Sean became a firefighter just like his father.”

They ended up in separate facilities.

According to Dean, when her father-in-law’s nursing home went into quarantine in mid-March, the family could no longer visit. At one point, he was moved to a separate floor so that new patients could be accommodated on the floor he had been living on. Dean believes some of these new patients were recovering from COVID-19, “thanks to a statewide mandate from Governor Andrew Cuomo.”

On March 29, Dean and her husband received a call that her father-in-law was ill. Three hours later, the family was informed that he had died, likely of coronavirus, which is the cause of death listed on his death certificate.

Dean’s husband Sean visited his mother to tell her about her husband’s death while standing 10 feet away from her.

“He (Sean) would never see her again.”

According to Dean’s testimony, nursing home residents and workers were allowed outside her mother-in-law’s facility to pick up newspapers without masks on.

“As family members, we were prohibited from coming to see Dee for risk of bringing in the virus. But why were the people who lived there coming and going?”

Although Dean’s mother-in-law died in a hospital, she contracted the virus in the elder care facility, according to Dean.

“Even though she contacted the virus in an assisted living center, her death was not counted that way because she died in a hospital,” said Dean.

“Our grief and confusion turned into anger as we learned about how elder homes were turned into death traps,” said Dean. “Our most vulnerable loved ones could not protect themselves.”

Dean repeated the call for “a full, outside investigation.”

Responding to Governor Cuomo’s allegation that any call for investigation “is political,” Dean said, “apparently my appearance here today makes some people uncomfortable. But I don’t think it’s me they’re uncomfortable with. It’s the cover up and the truth that happened in New York nursing homes. If anyone has the right to feel uncomfortable, it’s the thousands of family members who lost loved ones. Many would still be here today if they were protected at a time when they were most vulnerable.”

“Our loved once aren’t numbers on a curve the Governor said he succeeded in flattening. They are real people who lived important lives. Mickey and Dee Newman, born and bred in Brooklyn and the Bronx respectively, were the definition of what Governor Andrew Cuomo calls New York Tough,” Dean said through tears.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has argued against an independent investigation of the state’s nursing homes policies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, “There is no person trusted by all Democrats and Republicans” to conduct such an investigation.