New Coronavirus News from 19 Nov 2022

Ringleaders in massive COVID fraud extradited to US [ABC News, 19 Nov 2022]

A Los Angeles couple who fled to Europe after being convicted of running a ring that stole $18 million in coronavirus aid money have been extradited to the United States

LOS ANGELES -- A Los Angeles couple who fled to Europe after being convicted of running a fraud ring that stole $18 million in COVID-19 aid money were returned to the United States to face prison, authorities announced Friday.

Richard Ayvazyan and his wife, Marietta Terabelian, were extradited from the Balkan country of Montenegro, where they were living in a luxury seaside villa before their arrest in February.

They arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
While they were on the run last year, a court in Los Angeles sentenced Ayvazyan to 17 years in federal prison, and Terabelian to six years.

Prosecutors said the couple and six accomplices fraudulently applied for about 150 relief loans intended to help businesses and employees struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown.

They applied using fake identities or names belonging to dead or elderly people and foreign exchange students, prosecutors said.

To back up the applications, they submitted phony tax documents and payroll records for fake businesses to lenders and the U.S. Small Business Administration, prosecutors said.

The money was used for down payments on luxury homes in the Tarzana area of Los Angeles, suburban Glendale and the Palm Desert and to buy “gold coins, diamonds, jewelry, luxury watches, fine imported furnishings, designer handbags, clothing and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle," said a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Ayvazyan and Terabelian were convicted in June 2021 of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and other federal crimes. Two months later, while free on bond, the couple cut off their ankle monitors and fled, leaving behind their three teenage children, authorities said.

Unemployment fraud was a nationwide problem during the pandemic, as benefit applications overwhelmed state unemployment agencies. Criminals were able to buy stolen identity data on the dark web and use it to file a heap of phony claims.

The federal Labor Department has said that about $87 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits could have been paid improperly nationwide, with a significant portion attributable to fraud. An Associated Press review in March 2021 found that estimates ranged from $11 billion in fraudulent payments in California to several hundred thousand dollars in states such as Alaska and Wyoming.

The COVID variants dominating this fall mean 'we're still in the Omicron era' [Fortune, 19 Nov 2022]

BY ERIN PRATER

Omicron spawn BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 now lead U.S. COVID variants, dwarfing the previously dominant BA.5 two to one, the CDC reported Friday.

As Dr. Jake Lemieux, a Harvard Medical System assistant professor of medicine and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said Thursday, “The bottom line is we’re still in the Omicron era, or Omicron-plus era.”

BQ.1, a spin-off of fellow Omicron BA.5, leads the nation in infections, comprising a projected 26% of national cases, according to the agency’s Nowcast report, valid through Saturday. On its heels is its child, BQ.1.1, estimated to fuel just under a quarter of infections.

Former global leader BA.5, which drove a majority of cases this summer, came in third, comprising 24% of infections. Last week it was first, responsible for an estimated 34% of infections.

“The major thing that is notable is that BA.5 has largely been out-competed by BQ.1 and BQ.1.1,” Lemieux said at a Thursday press conference regarding COVID.

For most people, that’s a relatively good thing, given previous fears that newer, more immune-evasive Omicron variants like the ones we’re seeing now could cause a large wave of infections, with the potential to challenge hospital capacity late this year.

In fact, nationally, the number of COVID cases appear to be holding steady—not rising as some, including White House officials, had feared this spring. But with testing at an all-time low and most testing that is occurring happening in homes, data obtained and provided by public health officials is “increasingly less useful,” Lemieux said.

Still, U.S. hospitalizations and deaths—once considered poor indicators of the virus’ progress due to their lag time behind a rise in cases—are also holding steady, and that’s relatively good news. They’re now some of the pandemic’s most reliable indicators, he said.

The bad news in this week’s forecast is for those who are immunocompromised and rely on monoclonal antibodies, hospital administered IV treatments given to those who are most at risk of severe disease from the virus.

New variants like BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 have rendered useless “our last functional monoclonal antibodies,” Lemieux said. That means that existing treatments used for people who have been infected with previous variants aren’t effective.

This week the CDC added another variant to the list of those it’s tracking: BF.11, yet another descendent of BA.5. While the latest Omicron strains have greater immune evasion abilities than previous strains, they all seem fairly similar to their current competitors. And symptom-wise, they seem almost identical to the versions of Omicron that dominated this spring and summer, like BA.4, BA.5, and BA.2.12.1.

An ever-growing list of Omicron variants are in the race for dominance this winter, Dr. Moritz Gerstung, a professor of computational biology at the German Cancer Research Center, tweeted Thursday.

“Whoever wins, though, is very likely to have predictable characteristics,” he said.