Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Q: Paragraph: The Alaska Section of Epidemiology said in an update this week that it has requested help with response efforts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, KTVA-TV reported Wednesday. The number of cases is the highest reported in the state since at least the 1970s, said Susan Jones, a program manager with the state Division of Public Health. “It actually can be before that but that’s as far back as we have saved data,” Jones said. Out of the 75 cases, 64 occurred in Anchorage and 66 were men, according to the state. Of the nine women, two were pregnant at the time of diagnosis. The ages of people infected ranged from 18 to 76, with 20 cases recorded in the 25 to 29 age group. Health officials also found a probable case of congenital syphilis in an infant born in March whose mother had been diagnosed last year. Symptoms of the sexually transmitted infection in its early stages include genital sores, skin rash, swollen lymph nodes, and fever, according to the CDC. The disease in the tertiary stage can damage internal organs and result in death. According to the CDC, most people with untreated syphilis do not develop symptoms of the last stage, but tertiary syphilis could develop decades after infection. “It’s easy to acquire syphilis by having sex with somebody with infection, it’s easy to have the disease and not be aware of it, and it’s also easy to treat if we catch it early,” Jones said. Syphilis can be treated with an antibiotic injection. ___ Information from: KTVA-TV, http://www.ktva.com Claim: Alaska hit with largest syphilis outbreak in 40 years.

A: Alaska health officials have recorded 75 cases of syphilis in the state this year, marking the largest outbreak of the infectious disease in at least four decades.
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Q: Paragraph: "Accusations about the responsible party behind the United States’ struggle to accelerate coronavirus testing have come from every which way and the blame has fallen, often inaccurately, on the shoulders of different public officials. In a March 13 tweet, President Donald Trump said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied its testing system for decades but wasn’t prepared for a large scale pandemic, an issue that was complicated by policy changes made by former President Barack Obama. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., retweeted Trump’s remark and added his own comment: ""Trump is once again trying to blame the previous administration for the number of tests available. This is his #DailyLie."" U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, retweeted Schumer’s remark and said: ""It’s not Obama’s fault and it’s not Trump’s fault. We have stringent FDA regulations, long in place, that created barriers to the private industry creating a test quickly."" PolitiFact looked at a different Trump claim blaming Obama for a lack of testing. We also looked at a claim from Democrat Joe Biden about the Trump administration rejecting tests from the World Health Organization (they were never offered). Trump also inaccurately stated that any individual who wants to be tested for the coronavirus can get a test. We wanted to dig deeper into Crenshaw’s claim, which attributes the delays in the availability of widespread testing to Food and Drug Administration regulations. Justin Discigil, spokesman for Crenshaw, pointed to articles from ProPublica, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and the Washington Post, all of which highlighted the role FDA regulations played here. He added: ""Just to be clear – nowhere did we say that these regulations were the sole/only reason for the testing issue, we said that they created barriers."" A timeline of events The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States came at the end of January, when a man in Washington state developed symptoms after returning from a trip to Wuhan. One month later, federal health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was inevitable that the U.S. would experience a spread of the virus and urged people to take precautions. In these early days of the virus, tests were not widely distributed to local and state laboratories. Instead, testing for the new coronavirus was conducted almost entirely by the CDC — samples collected at the local level were sent to the agency. Initial test kits developed by the CDC for use in local and state labs were flawed and produced inaccurate results in some labs, meaning they couldn’t be distributed. As the agency worked to correct the tests, health officials turned to the FDA. The U.S. Association of Public Health Laboratories submitted a letter asking the agency to use ""enforcement discretion"" and authorize local and state labs to develop and use their own tests. During a public health emergency, labs and drug manufacturers must seek an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA to use diagnostic tests and medical treatments that have not gone through the typical clearance process — to share them faster in the emergency. (These authorizations were begun in 2004 under President George W. Bush.) For laboratory-developed tests, like the ones in question, FDA policy has stated that they cannot be used in clinical diagnoses without the FDA’s approval during an emergency. Although the goal of these regulations is to ensure only accurate lab tests are conducted, health officials have said they prevented them from quickly responding to the virus. One doctor in a Seattle lab described the process for getting an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA and said the agency asked for a level of testing that didn’t make sense in the context of an emergency, according to a GQ profile. A doctor in North Carolina told NBC News that she had developed a test using the World Health Organization’s protocol but had yet to receive the use authorization from the FDA, putting the state ""way behind"" in its ability to test patients. On Feb. 29, the FDA announced a change in the process: Labs would still need to seek the agency’s approval for their tests, but the labs could begin testing while waiting for the official green light. On March 16, (three days after Crenshaw made his claim) the FDA announced another change to its policies and put state officials in charge of coronavirus tests developed by laboratories in their states, meaning labs would engage with state officials and not the FDA. It also removes the requirement for these labs to apply for an Emergency Use Authorization for their tests. The changes also expand which labs and manufacturers are included in FDA guidelines and which kinds of tests can be developed. ""We believe the unprecedented policy set forth in today’s updated guidance, which addresses laboratories and commercial manufacturers, will help address these urgent public health concerns by helping to expand the number and variety of diagnostic tests, as well as available testing capabilities in health care settings, and reference and commercial laboratories,"" reads a release from the agency. After the changes After the FDA announced changes to its policies, Labcorps and Quest Diagnostics both announced plans to start testing for the new coronavirus, crediting changes in federal policy with their ability to do so. ""We applaud the FDA for providing the flexibility for innovative, quality lab developed tests to be brought to patients and providers quickly to advance effective response to the coronavirus outbreak,"" said Steve Rusckowski, chairman and chief executive officer of Quest Diagnostics, in a statement. But even as state and local authorities move to ramp up testing, the number of available tests is still lacking. In Austin, for example, there is still a gap between available test kids and demand for testing, as officials prioritize testing for health care workers, people living in nursing homes and people at high risk for complications from the virus. Our Ruling Crenshaw said in a tweet that longstanding FDA regulations ""created barriers to the private industry creating a test quickly"" for the coronavirus. Crenshaw’s statement is accurate. FDA procedures adopted in 2004 meant laboratories had to seek the agency’s approval before developing and using tests in communities, a policy many health care officials have said prevented the country from taking early action in response to the novel coronavirus. It is important to keep in mind that other factors have contributed to the low levels of testing for the virus, beyond the FDA regulations. But Crenshaw’s statement is accurate." Claim: Dan Crenshaw Says longstanding Food and Drug Administration regulations “created barriers to the private industry creating a test quickly” for the coronavirus.

A: Food and Drug Administration regulations in place since 2004 require labaratories to get an Emergency Use Authorization from the agency to use diagnostic tests and medical treatments that haven't gone through the typical clearance process. The policy was intended to speed up the process, but researchers reported significant delays between seeking an application and getting approval and these regulations played a role in that. The FDA has since changed the regulations to allow labs to start utilizing tests before receiving clearance.
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Q: Paragraph: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say they will begin taking temperatures and asking about symptoms of passengers at three U.S. airports who traveled from the outbreak city of Wuhan. Officials estimate roughly 5,000 passengers will go through the process in the next couple of weeks at New York City’s Kennedy airport and the Los Angeles and San Francisco airports. The first direct flight was expected Friday night at Kennedy, and the next expected Saturday morning in San Francisco. Doctors began seeing a new type of viral pneumonia — fever, cough, difficulty breathing — in people who worked at or visited a food market in the suburbs of Wuhan late last month. More than 45 cases of the newly identified coronavirus have been confirmed in Asia, most of them in Wuhan, including two deaths — at least one involving a previous medical condition. Officials have said it probably spread from animals to people but haven’t been able to rule out the possibility that it spreads from person to person. So far, the risk to the American public is deemed to be low, but the CDC wants to be prepared and is taking precautions, the CDC’s Dr. Martin Cetron said. “The earlier we detect a case, the better we can protect the public, and the more we can understand about this virus and its risk for spread,” he said in a call with reporters. It’s always possible a virus can mutate to become more dangerous. It’s also likely that more cases will spring up around the world, including at least one at some point in the United States, said another CDC official, Dr. Nancy Messonnier. The CDC is sending in 100 staffers to handle the airport screenings. Passengers who seem like they might be infected will undergo testing for flu or other possible causes. The plan is to place them in isolation at a nearby hospital until doctors know what they’re dealing with, to prevent possible spread of the new virus. Specialized testing for the virus can take a day for results, CDC officials said. At least a half-dozen countries in Asia have started screening incoming airline passengers from central China. The list includes Thailand and Japan, which both have reported cases of the disease in people who had come from Wuhan. Travel is unusually heavy right now as people take trips to and from China to celebrate the Lunar New Year. The CDC said the airport screenings are part of an effort to better detect and prevent the virus from the same family of bugs that caused an international outbreaks of SARS and MERS that began in 2002 and 2012. The CDC did not screen incoming passengers during those outbreaks, and some public health experts questioned whether they should do so now. “It’s not a particularly effective intervention, and it potentially offers a false sense of security,” said Dr. Kamran Khan, a University of Toronto researcher who has studied airport screenings during the SARS and Ebola outbreaks. Screeners likely will flag a lot of people with other germs — it is flu season — while missing infections from the new virus. Experts believe it may take up to two weeks between the time someone is infected and when they come down with a fever and other symptoms. The only other time the CDC has done airport screenings was in 2014, when health officials screened thousands of passengers from three West African countries for Ebola but detected no illnesses. In fact, one passenger who was infected but had no symptoms passed through the screenings and then developed symptoms after arriving in the United States. Some have argued measures like this have less to do with good science than with politicians hoping to convince the public that the government is doing something to protect them. Cetron rejected that notion. “There’s widespread consensus we should be doing this now,” among both political appointees and government scientists, he said. Passengers who don’t have symptoms will be handed cards that tell who to contact for health care if they develop symptoms later. That’s important, Khan said. “Educating travelers about the illness and letting them know what to do if they become sick after they leave the airport can be very helpful” because it can speed up proper diagnosis, treatment and isolation precautions, he said. Health authorities identified the bug this month as a new type of coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some of which cause the common cold; others found in bats, camels and other animals have evolved into more severe illnesses. SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, belongs to the coronavirus family, but Chinese state media say the illness in Wuhan is different from coronaviruses that have been identified in the past. Earlier laboratory tests ruled out SARS and MERS — Middle East respiratory syndrome — as well as influenza, bird flu, adenovirus and other common lung-infecting germs. CDC officials said Friday that they are not certain if China has begun screening passengers before they board airplanes to travel abroad, but it’s been discussed. The New York and San Francisco airports each receive three direct flights from Wuhan each week, Cetron said. Los Angeles International gets significant numbers of passengers who start their journeys in Wuhan but change planes in Beijing. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Claim: US to screen airline passengers from China for new illness.

A:
Three U.S. airports will screen passengers arriving from central China for a new virus that has sickened dozens, killed two and prompted worries about an international outbreak, health officials said Friday.
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