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: In a study in the medical journal The Lancet, they said the patients, with strains of TB known as extensively-drug resistant (XDR) and totally drug resistant (TDR) TB, have exhausted all available treatment options and are sent home. “These patients can survive for months or even years and are contributing to the community-based spread of XDR-TB,” said Keertan Dheda, who led the study at the University of Cape Town’s department of medicine. Tuberculosis infects the lungs and can spread through coughing and sneezing. In recent years, drug-resistant strains have spread around the world, batting off standard antibiotics and posing an increasingly urgent public health threat. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in Eastern Europe, Asia and South Africa, 450,000 people have MDR-TB, and around half of these will fail to respond to existing treatments. Dheda’s team followed 107 patients with XDR-TB from three provinces in South Africa between March 2008 and August 2012 to establish their fate. They also took samples from 56 patients and tested them to find out which and how many of 10 first- and second-line anti-TB drugs they were susceptible to. Despite being treated intensively with an average of eight anti-tuberculosis drugs, many of the patients fared poorly, with high rates of treatment failure and death. Five years after treatment initiation, only 12 of the patients had favorable outcomes and 74 percent had died. The researchers found that almost two-thirds of the tested patients had resistance to at least eight drugs, and there was one case of totally drug-resistant TB that was not susceptible to any of the 10 drugs tested. More worrisome, Dheda said, was that of the XDR-TB patients discharged into the general community, some 42 percent had failed to get better on treatment and were testing positive for active TB, and of these almost a third were at high risk of transmitting the disease. The patients also survived in the community for an average of 20 months - plenty of time to infect others. When people with lung TB cough, sneeze or spit, they propel the TB germs into the air. Another person needs to inhale only a few of these germs to become infected. “Alarmingly, we have shown for the first time that... treatment failure and discharge of such patients into the wider community is occurring systematically on a country-wide level in South Africa,” Dheda said in a statement about the findings. In one case where the researchers followed a genetic trail of transmission, they found that a patient with XDR-TB who was discharged after failing treatment went on to infect his brother, who also eventually died. Dheda said the reason many TB patients are being sent away from hospitals appeared to be lack of bed space in designated tuberculosis hospitals. “And alternative long-term residential and palliative care facilities are scarce.”  Commenting on the findings in The Lancet, Max O’Donnell from New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the United States said they should serve as an “urgent alarm”. “MDR-TB (multi-drug-resistant TB) in all its forms is an out-of-control problem with potentially vast and devastating consequences for global public health,” he wrote. “The situation regarding MDR and XDR-TB is bleak.”

SOLUTION: South Africa risks spreading totally drug-resistant TB: study.

PROBLEM: That could all change with a controversial Nov. 4 ballot initiative in which voters will get to decide for the first time whether to abolish a 1963 state law designed to protect small businesses. The law requires North Dakota pharmacies to be owned by local pharmacists or run by hospitals with a local pharmacist on staff. Supporters of the initiative argue it will remove an embarrassing anachronism, give consumers more choice and lower prescription drug costs. Opponents say that allowing national chains would destroy North Dakota’s tradition of personalized pharmacy care and be yet another example of how the state’s neighborly way of life is changing too fast. Canada, Germany, France and many other countries, they also note, have similar laws requiring local pharmacy ownership. “Independent pharmacies are more apt to focus on customer service,” said Gabe Gretz, who bought Service Drug Pharmacy in Williston last year with his father. “This is our bread and butter. It’s not just a hobby for us.”  “North Dakota Nice” is a truism here, not an irony, and most retail stores are still prohibited from opening before noon on Sunday - a throwback to laws designed to encourage family time. Yet since the oil boom began around 2010, drawing thousands of new residents to jobs where roughnecks can earn more than $100,000 a year, drug use, assault and other violent crimes have jumped. Recent sex-trafficking charges brought against an oil field worker in Williston, a once quiet town that is now the epicenter of the boom, marked the first charges of that type ever filed in the area and has escalated tension between new and old residents. Many newly arrived oil workers, and even some locals, say they hope the ballot measure passes so that they can use the  same chains they’ve grown accustomed to elsewhere. Rite Aid Corp has no outpost in the state, North Dakota’s Walmarts have no in-store pharmacies and the state’s lone Walgreens, on the Minnesota border, is prohibited from selling prescription drugs. CVS is able to operate only a handful of pharmacies in North Dakota thanks to a 2006 buyout of several Osco Drug stores that operated before the 1963 law. “Honestly, it’s not convenient getting my prescriptions here,” said Jan Anseth, a resident of Williston who spends winters in Arizona where she gets her medications from a national chain. In North Dakota, Anseth says, she runs into problems transferring prescriptions and getting anything more than a 30-day supply. The ballot’s primary sponsor, North Dakotans For Lower Pharmacy Prices, was funded with $168,000 in contributions from Walmart, Walgreens, Kmart and others. In campaign materials, the group cites data the Kaiser Family Foundation compiled in 2009 showing North Dakota has one of the highest per capita costs for prescription drug and medical devices in the country. Walmart says North Dakotans are missing out on its popular $4 prescription program, which makes many generic drugs available at the sharply discounted price. Crying foul, the state’s independent pharmacists say they’re able to often meet or beat prices from national chains, most of whom lose money on pharmacy sales as a way to get customers in the door. A random survey by Reuters of North Dakota’s independent pharmacies showed that a 30-day supply of the generic blood thinning drug clopidogrel ranged in price between $10 and $59.95. A CVS in Bismarck, the state capital, quoted a price of $149.95 for the same dosage. “I get to set the prices here at my pharmacy,” said Jenna Wahlstrom, a pharmacist at Larsen Service Drug, which her grandfather founded in Watford City in 1952. “It’s not a corporate decision.”  Like the big chains, Wahlstrom offers her customers a smartphone app and online refill ordering. Her pharmacy has transferred hundreds of prescriptions from retail chains for workers who have moved to the state, she said. Ahead of the vote, the state’s top politicians are declining to take sides. Governor Jack Dalrymple, a Republican who took office in 2010, says he shops at locally owned Aerohead Plaza Drug while in Bismarck and believes it has been able to compete effectively with the nearby CVS. Yet in the 1990s, as a state legislator, Dalrymple voted to keep the pharmacy law intact. “I don’t know,” he now says, “if that was the right vote.”

SOLUTION: Big pharmacies knock on door of oil-rich North Dakota.

PROBLEM: The articles said that they were based on a spike in total mortality rates reported by officials in Moscow, who said the capital registered about 1,800 deaths more in April 2020 than the monthly average. The New York Times reported that total is far higher than the official COVID-19 death count of 642, which the newspaper said was an indication of significant underreporting by the authorities. It quoted Tatiana N. Mikhailova, a senior researcher at the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, as saying that the number who died from the virus is “possibly almost three times higher than the official toll.” The Financial Times pointed to a similar surge in deaths reported by authorities in St. Petersburg, and it concluded that nationwide, Russia could have 70% more coronavirus deaths than it reports. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova complained about what she called “disinformation” by the two newspapers and said letters demanding a retraction would be passed on to both on Thursday. Danielle Ha, vice president for communications for The New York Times, told Russian news agencies the report was accurate because it was based on data released by an official state agency. The Financial Times didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Russia has reported over 250,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday and 2,305 deaths. The comparatively low death toll raised questions in the West, with some critics suggesting it could be much higher. The New York Times reported that Russia’s mortality rate of only about 13 deaths per million was far below the world average of 36. Russian health officials insisted that the relatively low coronavirus death toll is due to its instituting a quick ban on travel from neighboring China earlier this year, an early introduction of restrictions and tracing of the infected contacts. U.S. President Donald Trump has cited a similar travel ban for his efforts to combat the virus. Russian officials also have said the scope of testing has been significantly increased in recent weeks, allowing for officials to spot the infections quickly and prevent patients from developing life-threatening complications. Following the Foreign Ministry statement, lawmaker Vasily Piskaryov demanded that reporters from the newspapers be stripped of their accreditation, effectively banning them from working in the country. Zakharova said measures against the media organizations “will depend on whether they run the retraction.” Last month, Russian lawmakers approved fines of up to $25,000 and prison terms of up to five years for anyone who spreads what is deemed to be false information during the outbreak. Under the measure, media outlets could be fined up to $127,000 for disseminating disinformation about the virus. On Wednesday, Moscow’s health department rejected the allegations of undercounting coronavirus deaths. Officials said autopsies are being conducted in all suspected coronavirus deaths. “That’s why post-mortem diagnoses in Moscow and causes of death, in the end, are exceedingly accurate, and the mortality data absolutely transparent,” the statement said. More than 60% of deaths of people with coronavirus in Moscow were ascribed to other causes, such as cardiovascular ailments, cancer, diseases involving organ failures and other illnesses, according to the statement. Guidelines on reporting coronavirus deaths, issued by the World Health Organization in mid-April, state that “deaths due to COVID-19” should be considered as such “unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease.”  ___ Follow AP news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

SOLUTION:
Russia slams New York Times, Financial Times on virus deaths.