Category: Corona Virus

"The fact that a pandemic may or may not be occurring changes nothing about the meaning or intent of state's constitution and the preservation of our inalienable rights," says Karey Hanks, who is running unopposed for a state House seat, in the video.

McGeachin, who has repeatedly clashed with Republican Gov. Brad Little over what she believes to be his onerous response to the pandemic, is featured in the video holding a Bible -- and then placing a gun on said Bible -- as she reads from the state's Constitution.

Despite those numbers, McGeachin immediately criticized Little's move.

McGeachin has clashed with Little repeatedly since the start of the pandemic.

Earlier this year, the Idaho Statesman's Cynthia Sewell reported that the two top Republican elected officials hadn't spoken to each other in weeks, and that McGeachin had personally defied Little's executive orders to control the spread of the coronavirus in the Gem State.

"She left the Legislature's 2020 session early the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate to attend to her family business, a restaurant and pub in Idaho Falls. She has attended or supported rallies opposing Little's stay-home order and has been urging him to let businesses re-open. She defied his state order earlier this month to attend an event at a North Idaho brewery that re-opened despite Little's order."

McGeachin's high-profile critique of Little is explained by, you guessed it, politics! The governor and lieutenant governor in Idaho are not elected as a ticket, meaning that McGeachin holds no real loyalty to Little despite the fact that they are both Republicans.

While he spent a decade as lieutenant governor, she is a former state representative and small business owner. He represents the establishment within the GOP; she stands for the Trump wing.

The tension could well come to a head in 2022, when Little will be up for a second term and McGeachin will have the right of refusal when it comes to challenging him.

Link:

Republican infighting in Idaho over the coronavirus has reached a new low - CNN

AMSTERDAM As coronavirus cases have shot through the roof, waiting times for tests and results have grown so lengthy that the health authorities have considered sending samples to labs in Abu Dhabi. Contact tracing, divided among 25 competing contractors, has never gotten off the ground.

After months of discouraging the use of masks, saying they promote a false sense of security, the government just did an about face, calling for them to be worn in all public spaces.

And topping it all off, the royal family, ignoring the governments advice to travel as little as possible, flew off to their luxurious holiday home in Greece, adding to growing mistrust and resentment at home.

Britain? Spain? No. Its the Netherlands, one of Europes wealthiest countries, renowned for its efficient and organized government in most circumstances but not, apparently, in the pandemic.

The infection numbers keep rising, to a record 10,346 new cases on Monday in a country of 17 million people one-19th the size of the United States, which is reporting in the neighborhood of 75,000 new cases a day. And it is hard to keep track of the true toll, with the countrys official data incomplete because of technical errors.

Last week, new coronavirus patients had to be transferred by helicopter to Germany to relieve Dutch intensive-care units.

After weeks of taking incremental steps to curb the spread of the virus, the government announced Oct. 14 that, in addition to the new rules on face masks, all bars and restaurants would close for at least four weeks. With infections still rising, the authorities are considering establishing an evening curfew to keep people indoors, or even a two-week circuit breaker lockdown.

For the Dutch, who generally regard their country as one of the best run in the world with at times an undertone of superiority the level of institutional chaos has been a hard reckoning.

Its shocking really. I always thought we were one of the best countries in the world, best organized, said Rob Elgersma, 18, an agriculture student. But now, they have the ability to fix things but cant get their act together. What happened to us?

Thats a question a lot of Dutch people are asking right now.

When a country runs as smoothly as the Netherlands, even the smallest disturbance becomes a nuisance. If a train arrives two minutes late, passengers become annoyed. For a cyclist to wander slightly out of the designated lane is to invite a chorus of curses from others. And if anything beyond the control of the individual should go wrong, its the authorities who are to blame.

In contrast to many, if not most, Western democracies today, most Dutch people still have faith in their leaders, who are called bestuurders, which translates best as managers. Critics say they live up to that title in the poldermodel: a system of subjecting every major decision to review by every institution, representative or even individual involved.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte is widely acknowledged as a master of the process, which works fine under normal circumstances but can be a prescription for disaster during a crisis.

We are not a country where top-down leadership is much appreciated, said Alexander Rinnooy Kan, a former member of the Dutch Senate. Everything is done based on consensus.

Mr. Rinnooy Kan spent most of his career aligning the interests of different institutions, a system that he says has served the Netherlands well on many occasions. But it is a time-consuming process and has made us poorly positioned to deal with a demanding crisis such as this one, he said.

The Dutch culturally value the individual. They raise their children from an early age to be independent, critical thinkers, even sometimes dropping them in the forest without adults on summer nights and telling them to find their way home.

But the individual approach to strict social distancing measures in a pandemic works only when everyone acts together as a collective. And they did at first, going along with an intelligent lockdown in which bars and restaurants were closed but other shops remained open and people were free to move about as they pleased, while observing social distancing rules.

Nevertheless, the Netherlands was hard hit by the first wave. The Dutch statistical organization, the C.B.S., calculated that 10,000 people have died in the country because of the virus more than in Sweden, even taking account of the population difference.

The lockdown was lifted in June after the first wave subsided, and people returned to bars, parks, beaches and restaurants with a vengeance, paying little heed to social distancing rules.

Mr. Rutte continues to reiterate that the Netherlands is a mature democracy, home to proud adults, and urges people to adhere to the rules if they want the numbers to go down. But compliance has been spotty, and for now only nine other countries outpace the Netherlands 56 globally.

This has obviously been a colossal political miscalculation, said Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, a popular Dutch novelist who lives in Genoa, Italy. Everybody does as they like and are free to decide themselves. Even positive patients in the Netherlands arent ordered to stay indoors. This is absolutely bonkers. In Italy, youll be thrown in jail.

With the virus now raging, opinion polls show that a majority favors reimposing a full lockdown.

But Mr. Rinnooy Kan said that taking charge on that level was difficult for any politician in the Netherlands. There are so many competing interests vying for attention, he said, and there is very little patience for blanket measures.

As in the United States and other lagging countries, the governmental chaos surrounding the virus response has provided fertile ground for a coterie of conspiracy theorists, pseudo scientists and concerned citizens who feel that the pandemic is being used as an excuse to deprive people of their rights.

First, they played down the virus. Then they said there was a shortage of medical face masks, followed by a shortage of medicine, said Willem Engel, who leads a group called Virus Waarheid, or Virus Truth. They use measures that dont work.

All those things make me think there is something else behind this, he said. It cant just be mismanagement. I dont believe that.

Perhaps hubris is a better way to explain the failed policy, said the journalist Addie Schulte, who wrote an opinion article in the leading NRC Handelsblad newspaper, arguing that the governmental disorganization and incompetence laid bare by the pandemic also revealed a blind spot among the Dutch elite.

Simply put, he said, we havent been able to manage even the most basic services, and allowed this crisis to get out of hand.

Rosanne Kropman contributed reporting.

See more here:

As Coronavirus Surges, Chastened Dutch Wonder, What Happened to Us? - The New York Times

And yet, the pandemic is not impossible to control, contrary to what White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows recently suggested. Many other nations have successfully controlled it, some more than once. Masks can stop people from transmitting the virus. Shutting down nonessential indoor venues and improving ventilation can limit the number of super-spreading events. Rapid tests and contact tracing can identify clusters of infection, which can be contained if people have the space and financial security to isolate themselves. Social interventions such as paid sick leave can give vulnerable people the option of protecting their lives without risking their livelihoods.

Read: America is trapped in a pandemic spiral

The playbook is clear, but it demands something that has thus far been missingfederal coordination. Only the federal government can fund and orchestrate public-health measures at a scale necessary to corral the coronavirus. But Trump has abdicated responsibility, leaving states to fend for themselves. In May, I asked several health experts whether governors and mayors could hold the line on their own. Most were doubtful, and the ensuing months have substantiated their fears.

There are three small mercies that Americans can be thankful for. First, COVID-19 is a starter pandemic, and SARS-CoV-2 is neither as contagious nor as lethal as other pathogens. Second, it is the only major epidemic that Trump has faced during his presidency. (By contrast, Barack Obama dealt with the H1N1 flu and MERS in his first term, and Ebola and Zika in his second.) Third, it occurred not during the dawn of his term but at its twilight, when Americans have an opportunity to avert further incompetence.

Whatever the outcome of the election, the coming winter will be difficult. And whoever occupies the White House on January 21 will probably have to deal with another major epidemic before his term is over. With luck, that event wont begin until the COVID-19 threat has subsided, but overlapping outbreaks are also possible. We do not know how Joe Biden would fare, and if he is elected, the U.S. will still be riddled with systemic weaknesses and inequities that another pathogen could also exploit. But we do know exactly how Trump will react to the next crisis. The U.S. is trapped in a pandemic spiral, and so is Donald Trump.

Science values replicationrepeated experiments that verify whether the same outcome occurs. But in this case, that work is unnecessary. The U.S. has now clearly seen what happens when a pandemic occurs under Trump. It is an experiment that no one should ever want to rerun.

Listen to Ed Yong discuss this story on an episode of Social Distance, The Atlantics guide to the pandemic:

Subscribe to Social Distance on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (How to Listen)

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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America Is About to Choose How Bad the Pandemic Will Get - The Atlantic

The third and final clinical trial for Modernas coronavirus vaccine is still underway, but the company is already setting an aggressive schedule to manufacture and ship the vaccine immediately if the Food and Drug Administration approves it.

By the end of this year, we expect to have approximately 20 million doses ready to ship in the U.S., Moderna chief medical officer Dr. Tal Zaks said at an investor briefing on Thursday. From a distribution standpoint, were ready.

The company has also agreed to supply several other countries including Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Israel and Qatar with tens of millions of doses, Zaks said. By the end of 2021, the company hopes to supply the world with up to a billion doses or 500 million full courses of the two-dose vaccine.

But that hinges on whether the FDA and the equivalent regulatory agencies of other countries approve Modernas product, which is built on a new and untried vaccine technology. Modernas vaccine uses RNA, a type of genetic code that also served as the inspiration for Modernas name a portmanteau of the words Mode and RNA. This genetic code instructs human cells to produce a coronavirus protein. The bodys immune system then generates a defensive response to that protein.

The ongoing third clinical trial for the vaccine will determine if that immune response is enough to protect against coronavirus infection. Until the results of that trial are out, there's no saying if the vaccine will really work.

"The fact that developers are mass-producing their vaccines and all of them are doesn't mean the vaccine is going to work," said Dr. Dan Barouch, an immunologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who also worked on Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine candidate. "It just means they're taking a financial risk because of the severity of the pandemic, and they want to minimize the time required between approval and distribution."

According to the FDA, Zaks said, a final analysis of the clinical trial would need to show the vaccine is at least 50 percent effective for approval. But, he added, Moderna is setting a higher bar.

In order to call it a success, we will need to show a vaccine efficacy of 74% or greater, Zaks said during the investor meeting.

Thirty thousand participants are enrolled in the trial. Researchers selected participants to reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of the United States,Moderna corporate affairs lead Ray Jordan said. Many participants were already at a higher risk for COVID complications due to age or pre-existing health conditions.

We wanted to look at different communities of color because the severity of disease tends to be higher among those communities, Jordan said. We ended up with about 6,000 participants who were Hispanic or Latinx and about 3,000 that were African American.

If the FDA approves Modernas vaccine, each dose will cost between $32 and $37. In the United States, Zaks said, the first 100 million doses may work out to roughly $25 each when accounting for certain federal grants and other payments.

Link:

Moderna: 'We're Ready' To Ship 20 Million Coronavirus Vaccine Doses By The End Of 2020 - WBUR

The problem, at one time, was large gatherings: bars, restaurants, right? Mr. Cuomo said. Now, he said, its these small gatherings that are creating issues.

The aftermath of the Long Island birthday party, which adhered to state restrictions, underscored the governors point.

About 50 people attended the party in Bellport on Oct. 17, officials said. Nonetheless, inadequate social distancing resulted in 26 guests testing positive for the virus and 132 people being forced to quarantine, officials said.

Although there was nothing illegal about the party, Mr. Bellone said, it was important for county residents to consider the potential harm that even seemingly modest family gatherings could do.

These kinds of superspreader events are a threat to our public health and to our continued economic recovery, Mr. Bellone said.

In addition to fining the country club that hosted the wedding, officials said on Wednesday that for the first time since the pandemic began, the county was penalizing a local homeowner for violating the restrictions on gatherings.

The homeowner, Kim Catalanotto, was hit with a $2,500 fine after the county police broke up a party at her Farmingville house, where 200 to 300 people, most of them underage, had gathered and were consuming alcohol last Saturday, officials said. No virus cases had been linked to the party as of Wednesday, Mr. Bellone said.

Ms. Catalanotto could not be reached for comment.

Alain Delaqurire contributed research.

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Wedding and Birthday Party Infect 56 with Coronavirus in Long Island - The New York Times

But because they were set up to sample the city sector by sector, they were able to switch gears and begin sampling sewage for evidence of coronavirus.

"We were ready for this," Inchausti told CNN.

Now the city is regularly sampling sewers to keep an eye on the pandemic. And things are not looking good in parts of Tempe.

And they're not looking good in Boston, or in Reno, Nevada, or in many other cities across the country.

As daily coronavirus counts top 70,000 as measured by standard testing, sewage testing suggests things are going to get a whole lot worse.

"It's a leading indicator," Inchausti said. "The proof is in the poop."

Across the country, cities and universities are testing sewage to monitor the virus. Studies suggest it's a useful way to augment standard person-by-person coronavirus testing and while a sewage sample cannot point to an infected individual, it can give an indication that infections are circulating in an area, a neighborhood or even in an individual building.

Early on in the pandemic, it became clear that Covid-19 virus makes its way into the digestive system and could be found in human feces. From there, it's just a quick flush into the sewers.

Mariana Matus, co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics, which is analyzing sewage for dozens of customers, said sewage testing can show virus is starting to circulate even before people start showing up at hospitals and clinics and before they start lining up for Covid-19 tests.

"People start shedding virus pretty quickly after they are infected and before they start showing symptoms," Matus told CNN.

"We are seeing an upturn in the wastewater data which I think broadly matches what we are seeing across the country," Matus said. "It's been interesting seeing this almost second wave."

Massachusetts still has a low percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive at 1.5%. But the growing number of positive hits from the sewage indicate more positive tests are to come, Matus said.

"I think that it is pretty good evidence that we need to pay attention. Communities need to pay attention," said Matus, a biologist who started the company with a small group of colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The little startup has been deluged with requests to test wastewater systems, she said. "Who doesn't like a poop story?" Matus asked.

Testing the sewage for evidence of Covid-19 is like preparing a weather forecast, said Krishna Pagilla, chair of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno and director of the Nevada Water Innovation Institute.

"This is something that we should have concentrated on from the beginning in every community," Reno's Pagilla told CNN.

The coronavirus breaks down fairly quickly once it's flushed. Wastewater testing doesn't recover whole virus, but instead pulls out two specific pieces of viral material called RNA. It can no longer infect people, but is easy to identify.

Finding this RNA in the sewage tells researchers someone infected is using the system. The more RNA is there, the more people are infected.

"We will know a few days in advance. We can inform the health authorities," Pagilla said.

It's especially useful in a college town, Pagilla said

"People are reluctant to get tested now," he said. "Or we have students who say 'hey I am having symptoms but I am going to hang out at home.' They don't get seriously ill, so they don't get tested. But then maybe they decide to go to the gym."

In Tempe, Inchausti said the city makes even more direct use of the information.

"The relationship is never just to have the data and look at it and say, 'that's nice,' she said.

One, designated Area 6, abuts the Arizona State University campus. Its 8,100 residents are largely low-income. When coronavirus RNA counts went up in the sewage there recently, Inchausti said, "we spent $15,000 blitzing it with masks."

"We met people where they are," she added. "We understood they were going to the laundromat, so we helped them understand how to stay safe in the laundromat. We provided Covid-19 saliva testing in the school, in the neighborhood." Now they're analyzing test data to see if the intervention made a difference.

"I believe what Tempe is doing is the right way to do it," Pagilla said.

Cresten Mansfeldt says he thinks it made a difference on the campus at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The school has coordinated saliva tests for on-campus residents with regular wastewater monitoring conducted by students.

"They look at the data daily," said Mansfeldt, an assistant professor of environmental engineering, who normally studies how microbes interact with the chemicals people excrete in their waste.

"There is a lot of information that people flush down the toilet," Mansfeldt said.

Numbers shot up in the weeks after students returned to campus in late August, peaking at 130 positive PCR tests on September 17. But they plummeted to just a few a day after the city and county of Boulder instituted restrictions on college-aged residents that prevented gatherings of any size -- not even two people -- for two weeks. Officials relented after a week when students complained of safety issues, allowing those age 18 to 22 to travel in pairs.

Currently, 18- to 22-year-olds are no longer restricted any more than any other age group in Boulder county.

Now campus cases are ticking up again, from one case on October 16 to five on October 22 and eight on October 26. But Mansfeldt said the wastewater indicators look good. "Most sewers are testing negative," he said.

Inchausti and Pagilla both said they hoped state and federal officials would pay attention and start using sewage data to monitor the pandemic across the country as a whole -- and to respond.

"At this time, point estimates of community infection based on wastewater measurements should not be used," the CDC advises.

More here:

Sewage testing shows a country flush with coronavirus cases - CNN

Figure out how the coronavirus case numbers look near you with the map below. Hover on specific areas to see the zip code, town and number of cases. The data are provided by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and are updated on a weekly basis.

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Map: See where the coronavirus has been reported in Maine - Bangor Daily News

In some people, as COVID-19 decreases lung function, it may deprive the heart of adequate oxygen.

How does COVID-19 affect the heart?

Even though its known as a respiratory virus, doctors believe the coronavirus can directly infect the heart muscle and cause other problems leading to heart damage.

In some people, as COVID-19 decreases lung function, it may deprive the heart of adequate oxygen. Sometimes it causes an overwhelming inflammatory reaction that taxes the heart as the body tries to fight off the infection.

The virus can also invade blood vessels or cause inflammation within them, leading to blood clots that can cause heart attacks.

Clots throughout the body have been found in many COVID-19 patients. That has led some doctors to try blood thinners, although there is no consensus on that treatment.

Dr. Sean Pinney of the University of Chicago says people with heart disease are most at risk for virus-related damage to the heart. But heart complications also have been found in COVID-19 patients with no known previous disease.

A recent review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology notes that evidence of heart involvement has been found in at least 25% of hospitalized coronavirus patients. At some centers, the rate is 30% or higher. And some studies have found elevated enzyme levels and other signs suggesting heart damage even in patients with milder disease. It is not known whether that damage is permanent.

One small study found evidence of the virus in the hearts of COVID-19 patients who died from pneumonia. Another, using heart imaging, found inflammation of the heart muscle in four college athletes who had recovered from mild COVID-19 infections. There were no images available from before the athletes got sick, and therefore no way to know if they had pre-existing heart problems.

Dr. Tom Maddox, an American College of Cardiology board member, says it's unclear if the virus can cause a normal heart to become dysfunctional.

Theres still so much we dont know," Maddox said.

The United States has more than 8.8 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

As of Wednesday, the U.S. had more than 227,000 deaths from the virus. Worldwide, there are more than 44 million confirmed cases with more than 1.1 million deaths.

Excerpt from:

How does the coronavirus affect the heart? - KING5.com

1. How COVID-19 is affecting the globe

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have now passed 44.4 million globally, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of confirmed deaths stands at over 1.17 million.

Italy has registered a one-day record number of new coronavirus cases - 24,991. Cases are spreading especially quickly in the northern Lombardy region.

Colombia will extend its so-called selective quarantine until at least the end of November.

Cases are doubling every nine days in England, according to a new study by Imperial College.

A poll of economists has warned there is a high risk that the recent rise in cases will halt the global economic recovery by the end of the year.

Demand is down 19% from the third quarter of last year.

Image: Reuters

2. France and Germany introduce new lockdowns

New lockdowns have been announced in France and Germany as a result of surging cases, with restrictions almost as severe as earlier in the year.

Germany will shut bars, restaurants and theatres throughout November. Schools will remain open, but shops will only be allowed to operate with strict limits on access.

We need to take action now, Chancellor Angela Merkel said. Our health system can still cope with this challenge today, but at this speed of infections, it will reach the limits of its capacity within weeks.

Cases have accelerated in both countries.

Image: Our World in Data

In France, people will be required to stay in their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical care or exercise for up to one hour a day. As in Germany, schools will remain open.

The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated, President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised address. Like all our neighbours, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the virus.

We are all in the same position: overrun by a second wave which we know will be harder, more deadly than the first, he said. I have decided that we need to return to the lockdown which stopped the virus.

Global stock markets slumped on the news.

The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is hosted by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, with the support of Yunus Social Business and GHR Foundation and integrates the perspectives of social entrepreneurs through a strategic partnership with Catalyst 2030.

It identifies five principles that should lie at the heart of any COVID-19 response effort:

The Alliance has released a COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlining 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups to support social entrepreneurs during COVID-19. These align around the following streams:

1. Intermediaries and networks to surface the needs of the social entrepreneurs they serve on the ground and provide them with fitting support2. (Impact) investors to adapt their investment priorities and processes, and provide flexible capital and must-have technical assistance 3. Corporations to stand with the social entrepreneurs in their supply chains and ecosystems, and join forces with them to shape a new tomorrow 4. Funders and philanthropists to expand and expedite their financial support to social entrepreneurs and intermediaries, taking risks reflective of todays unprecedented times 5. Government institutions at all levels to recognize social entrepreneurs as a driving force in safeguarding jobs and in building a greener and equitable society, and to back them accordingly

3. India passes 8 million confirmed cases

India has passed the milestone of 8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, after reporting a rise of 48,881 new infections. New cases have fallen from a peak in September.

It's the second highest cumulative total in the world, after the United States, although the death toll has been low relative to the number of infections.

120,527 deaths have been reported in total.

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COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 29 October - World Economic Forum

A store displays a sign before closing down permanently following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, on Aug. 4, 2020 in Arlington, Va. The Small Business Administration's inspector general office said billions of dollars in relief loans may have been handed out to fraudsters or ineligible applicants. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A store displays a sign before closing down permanently following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, on Aug. 4, 2020 in Arlington, Va. The Small Business Administration's inspector general office said billions of dollars in relief loans may have been handed out to fraudsters or ineligible applicants.

The Small Business Administration may have handed out billions of dollars in loans to businesses that falsely claimed to have been damaged by the coronavirus lockdowns, a report from the agency said on Wednesday.

Officials at the agency were so inundated with requests for disaster aid starting last March that they couldn't adequately vet the applicants, according to the report from the Office of SBA Inspector General Michael Ware.

In one case, the agency approved 10 loans for 10 different bathroom renovation companies in the same city as part of the SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.

"However, we were not able to locate any bathroom renovation companies in that company's name in that city. Additionally, the email address indicates it is for a burrito restaurant, which we did locate in that city. SBA disbursed $1.4 million for these potentially fraudulent companies," the report said.

In another case, applicants using the same email address at a fish market applied for 85 loans "in various company names of jewelry stores, psychiatric services, construction, gas stations, and other non-seafood businesses." All but one of the loans were approved.

Overall, the report says the SBA approved $78 billion in program applications to potentially fraudulent or ineligible applicants, although not all of that was ultimately disbursed.

The inspector general's report said the level of fraud was partly due to the speed with which the agency had to operate after the economy seized up in March because of the pandemic.

In days, an unprecedented number of loan applications came in. On March 31, more than 680,000 applications came in, the highest number applications ever received in a single day. By April 10, more than 4.5 million loan applications had come in.

"[The] SBA has now approved and disbursed more loans for COVID-19 relief than for all other disasters combined in the agency's history," the report said.

As a result, loan officers were given just 15 minutes to process each application, which "resulted in cursory reviews rather than the deeper reviews required to ensure loans were given to eligible businesses," the report noted.

The fact that some amount of fraud took place is not a surprise.

The Justice Department has charged several dozen people with fraudulently applying for loans under the main coronavirus assistance programs, and law enforcement officials say investigations are continuing.

The suspected fraud took place as scammers and others took advantage of the programs set up by Congress to provide assistance to small businesses and others in the midst of the pandemic.

SBA officials quickly took issue with the report, saying it had mischaracterized many of the applications.

SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said many of the "potentially fraudulent" loans were legitimate transactions that had been mischaracterized.

Many of the examples of shared IP and e-mail addresses involved loan applications by people who relied on certified public accountants, law firms, loan packagers, or religious and cultural centers to submit their loan applications, she said.

The report "does not fully and accurately portray SBA's highly successful delivery of an unprecedented volume of disaster assistance. Rather, the [report] grossly overstates the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse in the ... program," she said.

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Billions In COVID-19 Relief Loans May Have Been Handed Out To Scammers, Report Says - NPR