New York state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett unexpectedly announced Friday she will leave her job after just over one year running the state responses to COVID-19 and monkeypox under Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“I am leaving now so the next commissioner can have the chance to lead this great department for a full four-year term under the leadership of Gov. Hochul,” Bassett said Friday about her decision to bolt by the end of the month.
The timing of her departure contrasts with the six-year tenure of her predecessor, Dr. Howard Zucker, as well as Bassett’s own four years leading the New York City Health Department under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Bassett said she will return to Harvard University, where she previously led the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights before taking an official leave of absence to take the New York gig.
Her resignation becomes official Jan. 1.
Bassett previously made her name in public health through AIDS work that included 17 years on the faculty at the University of Zimbabwe.
“Throughout her time in my administration — from the onset of the Omicron variant and through mpox and polio outbreaks — she has worked tirelessly to keep New Yorkers informed, healthy and safe. I am proud that she brought her world-renowned expertise in equity and public health to the State Department of Health,” Hochul said in a statement.
While Bassett is a world-renowned public health expert, her tenure was not without controversy.
Bassett faced criticism for resisting efforts to investigate controversial nursing home policies during the pandemic under disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in August 2021 amid a litany of scandals including an alleged cover-up of COVID-19 deaths.
“The agency still has PTSD from the Cuomo years,” a former state Health Department official told The Post Friday.
Cuomo critics say Bassett never fulfilled hopes to have a full accounting of what happened in nursing homes under his administration.Â
“The fact that Dr. Bassett saw no need to look back at the DOH’s response during COVID including the deadly decision to flood New York nursing homes with over 9,000 covid patients says all you need to know about her priorities,” said Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist who lost her in-laws to COVID-19 in a nursing home, and has been an outspoken critic of Cuomo’s handling of the crisis.
Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, noted that Hochul did not task her own health commissioner with overseeing a controversial review of state pandemic policies including nursing homes that remains ongoing. Â
“She took over during what should be a turning point for the Health Department – a global pandemic that hit New York especially early and especially hard and rattled confidence in its public health system,” Hammond said.Â
“Dr. Bassett resisted the idea of unwinding past events –- which would be crucial to learning the right lessons – and made no obvious effort to better prepare the state for future viruses,” he added.
But some issues facing Bassett were of Hochul’s making, too, including the implementation of controversial vaccine mandates as the healthcare industry struggled with staffing issues.
The DOH also got entangled under Bassett’s watch in an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving the purchase of COVID-19 rapid tests from a company linked to $300,000 in donations to Hochul’s reelection campaign.
While Bassett helped improve the Health Department after a decade under Cuomo, the former official said she struggled at times.
“Bassett only understood half the job. She was great at public health but didn’t know much about regulating hospitals and nursing homes,” the source said.
Hochul has denied wrongdoing and Bassett has never been personally tied to the decision-making that led to the controversial purchases at prices much higher than those paid by California for the same tests, which the Times Union revealed last summer.
Dean said she was pessimistic about who Hochul will pick to replace Bassett.
“Maybe the next health commissioner will care more about wanting to find out what went wrong in the spring of 2020 that took the lives of so many elderly New Yorkers, but under Kathy Hochul’s leadership, we won’t hold our breath,” she said.
While it remains unclear exactly what spurred Bassett’s final decision to leave New York for Massachusetts again, Bassett suggested Friday that it took time to make up her mind.
“This was a very difficult decision,” she said.