instruction:
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.
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"In a press conference on May 5 in which Gov. Greg Abbott updated his reopening plan to add businesses such as hair salons and gyms, he recommended that at-risk populations ""remain at home if at all possible"" and avoid in-person gatherings, such as a church service, funeral or wedding. ""We strongly encourage at-risk populations to try to watch or participate remotely, remembering this very important point, and that is almost 75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older,"" Abbott said. Texas was among the first states to start reopening businesses and lifting restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus, allowing retail stores and restaurants to open May 1 at 25 percent capacity. Abbott announced the latest set of reopenings Monday, expanding restaurant capacity to 50 percent and granting bars the ability to open at 25 percent capacity within the next couple weeks. This comes as the state continues to see its number of infections and deaths rise and clusters form mostly in rural parts of the state where meatpacking plants are located. Hospitalizations, however, have decreased since mid-April. With that in mind, we had to ask: Is Abbott right that almost 75% of coronavirus deaths in Texas are people older than 65? Looking at the numbers Abbott’s spokesman John Wittman said Abbott’s claim is based on figures from the Texas Department of Health Services, which publishes daily numbers on the state’s COVID-19 testing and cases. The data includes a breakdown of coronavirus deaths by age, race and gender, but only for those cases where the deaths have been investigated by the local and regional health departments. As of Wednesday, the majority, or 489, were still under investigation. ""The demographic data on cases and fatalities come from the case investigation forms submitted by local health departments and our regional offices,"" said DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen. The purpose of the investigation is to confirm that the person had COVID-19 but also to collect other details about them and the circumstances around their death, Van Deusen said. Wittman said the data showed that 75% of investigated deaths were people 65 and older when Abbott made this statement. ""It alternates almost daily, but it’s generally around that range,"" Wittman said. As of May 6, the day after the press conference, the death toll in Texas was 948. Fewer than half, or 433, had been investigated. Of those, about 71 percent were Texans 65 and older. It was still about 71 percent, or 345 out of 489 investigated cases, as of Wednesday. The age groups broke down like so: Ages 10 to 19 years old: 2 deaths, or 0.4% Ages 20-29: 10 deaths, or 2.04 % Ages 30-39: 9 deaths, or 1.8% Ages 40-49: 21 deaths, or 4.29% Ages 50-59: 54 deaths, or 11.04% Ages 60-64: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 65-69: 59 deaths, or 12.06% Ages 70-74: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 75-79: 45 deaths, or 9.2% Ages 80+: 196 deaths, or 40.08% Across the United States, about 79% of coronavirus deaths have been people 65 years and older, according to the National Center for Health Statistics data submitted between the beginning of February to the beginning of May. Like Texas’ statistics, the national numbers are also incomplete. The number of deaths represent only those entered between those dates and only include people with confirmed or presumed COVID-19. ""While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded by a person, which takes an average of 7 days,"" the NCHS states on its website. The data is also always somewhat behind because of the lag time between when a death occurred and when a death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. The delay can last anywhere from one week to eight or more. Our ruling Abbott said almost ""75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older."" Of confirmed coronavirus deaths, close to 75% were people within the age group Abbott provided, but he failed to include the caveat that this statistic leaves out more than half of the total deaths that have not yet been investigated."
answer:
“Almost 75 percent of the deaths from COVID-19 in the state of Texas are a result of people contracting COVID-19 who are age 65 and older.”


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Central to the plan to protect the city, some or all of the 78 barriers will one day be raised when the sea rises more than 110 centimeters (43 inches), to prevent damaging high tides from pushing into the lagoon city, a world heritage site built picturesquely — but somewhat precariously — upon more than 120 islands. Concerns that high tides are becoming more frequent because of climate change have increased the urgency. While the concept is simple, its realization has been anything but. The system of movable underwater barriers, dubbed Moses, has been beset by corruption, cost overruns and delays. Projected at 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) and meant to be completed by 2011, the project has so far cost 5.5 billion euros and is running a decade behind schedule. In the wake of last month’s flooding of Venice, the worst in 53 years, the consortium that oversees construction of Moses is eager to demonstrate that the project — after years of bad news — is on track and will be fully operational by the end of 2021. Venetians say they cannot afford to be wrong. Skeptics and critics say they may be. A recent test of the deepest expanse of barriers — at the Malamocco entrance to the lagoon — was declared a success by the New Venice Consortium. It was the last of the four sections of barriers to be completely raised — but so far only in calm seas. The real test will come when all four are raised at once, and not only in serene waters, but under flood conditions. That isn’t scheduled to take place until the end of next year. It took six years to test each of the four movable sea walls covering the three openings to the lagoon, partly because work was slowed by a 2014 corruption scandal that implicated the three main contractors and sent 35 people to jail. Work is continuing largely with the original subcontractors now contracting directly with the consortium, which itself has been placed under government control as a result of the scandal. The fact that the barriers have not yet been physically tested in rough seas is a concern to critics. Paolo Vielmo, an offshore marine engineer who has long criticized the project, said that tests carried out in a laboratory in the Netherlands in the 1990s indicated that the barriers, under certain conditions, would oscillate out of control — possibly even breaking apart. “Its behavior is not predictable,’’ Vielmo said. He said that the trials so far declared successful have been under only modest sea conditions that fail to represent anywhere near the threat of the phenomenon of extreme oscillation called subharmonic resonance. Vielmo and two other offshore engineers have compiled a report for the Codacons consumer and environment protection advocacy group, which is asking officials to run additional calculations to see if the project is indeed viable. And if it is not, Codacons says Moses should be stopped. “We don’t want to delay by one minute the possibility to make Moses operational. But we say we cannot make it operational until we are sure it will work,’’ said Franco Conte, president of Codacons in Venice. “Naturally, the Venetian community is exasperated and they say, ‘If we did 95%, let’s do 100% and see if that works.’ But that is unconscionable. If we don’t know if it works, we cannot experiment.”  The barrier system is made up of giant flood gates, each 20 meters (66 feet) long. The gates are attached by hinges to giant cement blocks placed on the seabed along the three openings from the sea into the lagoon, Malamocco, Chioggia and the Lido. The gates can be lifted to create a temporary barrier in high tides. Once the water has receded, they can be lowered again — allowing shipping traffic to continue and for the tidal system to flush out the lagoon. The idea behind the project was to create a mobile system that would not impede views of the unique and protected landscape. But Moses has suffered criticism from the start that there were simpler, cheaper systems that could have been deployed. Venetians have been waiting since the record 1.94-meter (6.36-foot) flood of 1966 for a system to protect them from regular inundations. The flooding in November, the second-worst recorded, proved the urgency. In the 150 years that they have been recording the tide levels in Venice, two high tides above 1.5 meters have never been recorded in a year. In November, there were three in one week. Climate scientists note that exceptional tides — those over 1.4 meters — have become much more frequent in the past two decades, with more than half of all recorded occurring since 2000. “One has to realize the kind of existential question that that serious flooding has given rise to,” said Jane Da Mosto, an environmental scientist and executive director of the non-profit group We Are Here Venice, which is working to defend the city against myriad issues, including depopulation, cruise traffic through St. Mark’s basin and overtourism. “People are asking: will Venice be defendable against these kinds of episodes?’’  It’s not just the still-uncalculated damage to landmarks like St. Mark’s Basilica, where corrosive salt water creeps through porous brick and tile. It’s also the boxes of ruined belongings and piles of soaked mattresses discarded in alleyways and loaded onto motorboats and trash barges for disposal. The relentlessness of the Venetian fall and winter tides make one-third of ground floors uninhabitable in the historic canal city. “I am very old, I cannot say that I want to die, but I certainly do not want to be witness to the fact that it does not work,” 84-year-old resident Paola Scarpa said of the Moses barriers, as she walked to check on a family property in the Canareggio neighborhood on a recent December morning. “It would be a pain too great.”  ___  Associated Press journalist Trisha Thomas contributed to this report.
answer:
Venice tide barriers pass another test but skeptics remain.


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More than 115,000 people have tested positive for the virus in Italy since the outbreak was discovered in its wealthy northern regions on Feb. 21 and almost 14,000 have died, the highest death toll in the world. But daily tallies of new infections and fatalities have been steady in recent days, which experts hope points to a decline soon. Pressure is growing to find out who has been exposed to the virus and whether some people have developed immunity, in order to soften the severe lockdown measures the government has imposed to curb the contagion. Franco Locatelli, the head of Italy’s Higher Health Council, said a reliable antibody testing system to use at the national level had still to be identified, though various products had already been proposed. Locatelli told reporters that government scientists were working hard to analyse the tests and hoped to have a result “in a few days”. He added that it would probably then take another month before the health authorities are able to roll out recommendations on a nationwide testing procedure. Some badly hit Italian regions have already started buying some of the tests already on the market. Speaking at the same news conference, health officials said the lockdown had prevented a potentially ruinous spread of the contagion from its northern epicentre to less developed southern regions. “The social distancing measures adopted on a national scale have meant that where the number of infections was relatively low, it remained low,” said Giovanni Rezza, director of infectious diseases at the national health institute. The government said this week that curbs on movement and business activities introduced nationwide on March 9 would stay in place until at least April 13. The head of the Civil Protection Agency, Angelo Borrelli, said on Friday he expected them to remain beyond May 1.
answer:

Italy experts say reliable coronavirus antibody test may be ready soon.