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: South Africa has reported the most coronavirus cases in sub-Saharan Africa, and public health experts are worried that the virus could overwhelm the health system if infection rates rise steeply. President Cyril Ramaphosa has been praised for ordering some of the toughest measures on the continent to try to halt the spread of the virus, including a 21-day lockdown from midnight on Thursday, deploying the army to support police and ordering underground mines to suspend operations. Public Works Minister Patricia de Lille told a news conference that her ministry had identified more than 16,000 beds in potential quarantine facilities, including government buildings, hotels, holiday properties and hospitals. De Lille’s spokeswoman and a Health Ministry spokesman were not able to say who would be placed in the quarantine sites. Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in an interview with state broadcaster SABC that it was still “early days” in terms of the number of infections. “We are expecting that there is still going to be quite an increase in the number of cases, and we are also expecting that a lot of work needs to be done by South Africans to contain this infection,” Mkhize said. Businesses of all sizes are bracing for a big impact from the lockdown, with Airlink becoming the latest local airline to suspend flights from midnight on Thursday and state power utility Eskom applying for its critical staff to be exempt so that electricity supplies can continue uninterrupted. South African National Parks said it would close all its tourism facilities to the public from Wednesday. Mining Minister Gwede Mantashe said production of gold, chrome, manganese and other minerals would be scaled down but that the processing of platinum group metals would continue. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) launched a bond-buying programme, giving into public and political pressure to intervene more directly in providing stimulus. Government bonds including the 2030 issue rallied on the SARB intervention.

SOLUTION: South Africa prepares quarantine sites as coronavirus cases rise to 709.

PROBLEM: Financial markets had their worst day in 30 years despite emergency action by global central banks to try to prevent a recession, with U.S. stock markets falling 12% to 13%, wiping out trillions of dollars in market value. Just a month ago, financial markets were hitting record highs on the assumption the outbreak would largely be contained in China and not cause disruptions beyond what was seen with earlier viral outbreaks of Ebola, SARS and MERS. There have now been more cases and more deaths outside mainland China than inside, with 180,000 cases worldwide and over 7,000 deaths. Canada, Chile and other countries closed their borders to visitors. Peru deployed masked military personnel to block major roads, while Ireland launched a campaign to recruit more healthcare workers. Airlines slashed flights, shed jobs and asked governments for billions of dollars in loans and grants. In contrast to much of the world, Mexico and Brazil still held large political rallies and the United Kingdom kept its schools open. GRAPHIC: Track the spread of coronavirus - here  U.S. states pleaded with the Trump administration on Monday to coordinate a national response to the outbreak, saying patchwork measures enacted by state and local authorities were insufficient to confront the coast-to-coast emergency that has killed at least 74 Americans. A few hours later, President Donald Trump urged Americans to halt most social activities for 15 days and not congregate in groups larger than 10 people in a newly aggressive effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Calling the highly contagious virus an “invisible enemy,” Trump said the worst of the outbreak could be over by July, August or later and warned a recession was possible. However, the United States was not yet closing its borders or mandating curfews or business closures on a national scale. Many states and cities had already taken those steps or were preparing to. San Francisco area residents will be urged to shelter in place for three weeks starting on Tuesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A White House adviser said the United States could pump $800 billion or more into the economy to minimize economic damage. EU finance ministers were planning a coordinated economic response to the virus, which the European Commission says could push the European Union into recession. The World Health Organization (WHO) called on all countries on Monday to ramp up testing programs as the best way to slow the advance of the pandemic. “We have a simple message to all countries - test, test, test,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva. “All countries should be able to test all suspected cases. They cannot fight this pandemic blindfolded.”    In Italy, another 349 people died on Monday, taking the total to 2,158, with nearly 28,000 cases, after 368 deaths were reported on Sunday, a daily toll more dire than even China was reporting at the peak of the outbreak. “Many children think it is scary,” Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg told a news conference dedicated to answering children’s questions about the pandemic. “It is OK to be scared when so many things happen at the same time,” Solberg said. Several countries banned mass gatherings such as sports, cultural and religious events to combat the fast-spreading respiratory disease that has infected nearly 179,000 people globally and killed more than 7,000. Spain and France, where cases and fatalities have begun surging at a pace just days behind that of Italy, imposed severe lockdowns over the weekend. The Middle East business and travel hub of Dubai said it was closing all bars and lounges until the end of March. Thailand plans to close schools, bars, movie theaters and popular cockfighting arenas. Public health experts in the United States and elsewhere are hoping the measures will help spread out the number of new cases over time so as not to overwhelm hospitals and healthcare systems as has happened in Italy. Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told daily Corriere della Sera that the outbreak was still getting worse, though the governor of Lombardy, the northern region that has suffered the worst, said he saw the first signs of a slowdown. The International Olympic Committee will hold talks with heads of international sports organizations on Tuesday, a source close to a federation briefed on the issue said, amid doubts the Tokyo 2020 Olympics set to start on July 24 can proceed.

SOLUTION: Coronavirus causes historic market drop, global scramble to contain 'invisible enemy'.

PROBLEM: The methods, currently only at the research stage in laboratories in Britain and the United States, would for the first time involve implanting genetically modified embryos into women. Critics said the technique was ethically suspect and would eventually lead to a eugenic ‘designer baby’ market. It involves intervening in the fertilization process to remove faulty mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as fatal heart problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy. The methods are designed to help families with mitochondrial diseases - incurable conditions passed down the maternal line that affect around one in 6,500 children worldwide. Mitochondria act as tiny energy-generating batteries inside cells. The potential treatment is known as three-parent in vitro fertilization (IVF) because the offspring would have genes from a mother, a father and from a female donor. After a national public consultation showed Britons broadly favor the idea, the government’s chief physician said on Friday it should be allowed to go ahead under strict regulation. “Scientists have developed ground-breaking new procedures which could stop these diseases being passed on, bringing hope to many families seeking to prevent their children inheriting them,” Sally Davies, chief medical officer, told reporters. “It’s only right that we look to introduce this life-saving treatment as soon as we can.”  But David King, director of the Human Genetics Alert campaign group said “the techniques are unnecessary and their use is ethically unsound” and criticized the government for failing to conduct a more comprehensive public consultation. “They cross the ethical line that has been agreed by government around the world that we should not genetically alter human beings,” he said in an emailed statement. Davies said the government’s health department is drafting regulations to cover the new treatments and plans to publish them later this year. The move would make Britain the first country in the world to give patients an option of mitochondrial DNA transfer to avoid passing the diseases on to their children. Scientists are researching several three-parent IVF techniques. One being developed at Britain’s Newcastle University, known as pronuclear transfer, swaps DNA between two fertilized human eggs. Another, called maternal spindle transfer, swaps material between the mother’s egg and a donor egg before fertilization. A British medical ethics panel which reviewed the potential treatments for mitochondrial diseases decided last year they were ethical and should go ahead as long as research shows they are likely to be safe and effective. Because Britain is in the vanguard of this research, ethical concerns, political decisions and scientific advances here are closely watched around the world - particularly in the United States where scientists are also working on DNA swap techniques. Pro-life campaigners have already criticized the scientific research, saying that creating embryonic children in a lab abuses them by subjecting them to unnatural processes. Critics like King also worry that modifying embryos to avoid disease is the first step towards the creation of “designer babies”, whose genetic makeup could be modified as embryos to ensure certain traits such as height or hair color. Asked whether she was “comfortable” with taking such a major step along the way to allowing human genetic modification, Davies said she had debated and considered the ethical implications with many experts over many years and had come to the conclusion the techniques should be allowed. Any final decision on putting the regulations in place to allow the new treatments to be offered will be subject to a vote in parliament, but Davies said she hoped the first patients may be able to get the new treatments within two years.

SOLUTION:
Britain plans world's first go-ahead for '3-parent' IVF babies.