TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: Some 100 medical workers are reported to have died from the disease so far, including many nurses, Howard Catton, ceo of the International Council of Nurses, told a news briefing. The world’s 28 million nurses, 59% of all health workers, were overstretched before the crisis began, the WHO, the Nursing Now campaign, and Geneva-based council said in the first “State of the World’s Nursing Report”. Some have become targets out of people’s fear of contagion. “We have picked up reports around the world of abuse, harassment of health workers, we had one case of somebody being spat on as well. It is completely unacceptable, reprehensible,” Catton said. He called for governments to have a “zero tolerance approach” to such abuse and to ensure that public health messages are clear and fact-based. Giorgio Cometto of WHO’s health workforce department said it was a relatively new phenomenon “whereby health workers are seen as a potential risk, as a potential threat as opposed to being a solution to the current crisis”. “This really reinforces the need to have adequate communication for the public as well as specific measures to be put in place to protect health workers particularly in the context of the response to the current pandemic,” he said. Baroness Mary Watkins, chair of Nursing Now, said nurses have been attacked previously during outbreaks of Ebola and the AID-HIV epidemic. Referring to COVID-19, she said: “We have not had active violence that I know of in the UK, but we have had people trying to take nurses’ badges because they have been allowed to go into supermarkets early to buy food before going on their shift... That seems to have had a stop put to it. “But there has been a very very clear directive from the police in many countries that attacking a health care worker is unacceptable. We need to keep pressure up,” Watkins added. There is still a global shortage of nearly 6 million nurses, mainly in low- and lower-middle income countries, where the number of new recruits barely keeps pace with population growth, the report said. Nurses are particularly lacking across Africa, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Venezuela, it added.

SOLUTION: Nurses must be protected from abuse during coronavirus pandemic: WHO, nursing groups.

PROBLEM: Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top medical adviser, Chris Whitty, said on Wednesday that data on the extent and impact of the outbreak was encouraging but that it was too soon to focus the next phase of the government’s response. “Our view is that it is probably reaching the peak overall,” Whitty said at the government’s daily news conference. “We are not yet at the point where we can say confidently and safely ‘this is now past the peak and we can start thinking very much now about the next phases.’”  So far, more than 12,868 people with COVID-19 have died in British hospitals, though new official data indicates the true death toll could be much larger. Whitty said the daily number of deaths could rise in coming days due reporting lags. The government is widely expected to announce on Thursday that it will extend the most far-reaching restrictions on daily life in Britain’s peacetime history. But Johnson had initially refrained from approving the stringent controls that other European leaders imposed. He later closed down the country when projections showed a quarter of a million people could die in the United Kingdom. The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said the prime minister had initially been too slow to impose the lockdown, signalling the political row that is likely to dominate the national discourse for years to come. “I am worried that it looks like we are going to have a higher death rate than any other country in Europe and there will obviously be searching questions about why that has happened,” Starmer told LBC radio. “I did think the government was going too slowly,” Starmer said. “We will have to look back in due course.”  A widespread lockdown came into force on March 23. Prior to that the Conservative government had urged people not to make unnecessary journeys and to cut down on socialising, rather than closing establishments down. But Britons had still packed pubs and restaurants, and even the Cheltenham horse-racing event went ahead, bringing together thousands of punters. Johnson even joked about shaking hands with medical staff during a hospital visit. Starmer, a 57-year-old former prosecutor who won the Labour Party leadership earlier this month, also called on the government to publish its exit strategy from lockdown restrictions. Foreign minister Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Johnson while he recovers from COVID-19, will lead a cabinet meeting on Thursday morning, and in the afternoon chair an emergency response committee meeting to decide on extending the lockdown   The United Kingdom’s hospital death toll from COVID-19 rose by 761 to 12,868 as of 1600 on April 14, the health ministry said. The toll had gone up by 778 the previous day. The official British death toll is the fifth-highest globally after the United States, Italy, Spain and France. The United States has reported more than 28,000 deaths while Italy has reported more than 21,000. Several European countries have announced plans or already begun to relax restrictions, balancing the risk of reversing gains against further damage to battered economies. Starmer said Labour supported extending the measures in Britain but that to “maintain morale and hope”, the public needed to have an idea of what is coming next. Government officials have defended their course of action regarding the start of the lockdown and said it would be a mistake to talk about how to end the lockdown before they were confident the peak had been reached. Amid the doom, though, there were rays of hope. A 106-year-old woman, thought to be the oldest patient in Britain to beat the novel coronavirus, was discharged from hospital. Connie Titchen, born in 1913, had battled suspected pneumonia and COVID-19. A 99-year-old war veteran, Tom Moore, has raised more than 8 million pounds ($10.03 million) for Britain’s health service with a walk around his garden.

SOLUTION: UK virus outbreak 'probably' peaking, but too soon to ease lockdown.

PROBLEM: Of that figure, 17 cases were imported via individuals arriving overseas, up from 15 the previous day. Newly discovered asymptomatic cases were at 54, down from 66 a day earlier. Three of the new cases were imported, according to the health ministry. The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country reached 82,719, an increase of 300 from the number reported the day prior. The sharp uptake follows revisions in case reporting that the NHC announced on Friday. The ministry placed the total death toll from the virus at 4,632 as of April 17, a number it originally reported on Friday when it publicly announced the revised figures. The new death toll marks an increase of over 1,000.

SOLUTION:
China reports 27 new coronavirus cases, death toll at 4,632 after data revisions.