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.
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Question: Paragraph: The airline had earlier said only cabin crew operating mainland China flights could wear masks, in response to the airline’s flight attendants calling for permission to wear masks on all flights globally as cases have also been confirmed in the United States, Thailand, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. “Due to the evolving information from health authorities, we will allow crew members and frontline airport employees to wear surgical face masks when on duty at their discretion,” Cathay said in a statement. The coronavirus outbreak, which began in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, struck as millions of Chinese prepared to travel for the Lunar New Year, heightening contagion risks. Wuhan’s local government said it would close all urban transport networks and suspend outgoing flights from the city as of 10 a.m. on Thursday (0200 GMT), state media reported, adding that the government said citizens should not leave the city unless there were special circumstances. The Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union said on Tuesday it had received a “tremendous” amount of emails and messages from members concerned over catching the virus given they are exposed to over 300 passengers from numerous places on a single flight. On Wednesday evening, Cathay said on its website that rebooking, rerouting and refund charges would be waived for all tickets booked on or before Jan. 21, arriving to or departing from Wuhan through March 31, an extension from the Feb. 15 date listed the prior evening. Deaths from China’s new flu-like virus rose to 17 on Wednesday, with more than 540 cases confirmed. The virus has already spread beyond Wuhan to population centers including Beijing, Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong. Cathay said that as required by the Hong Kong health authorities, it was distributing health declaration forms and will be making face masks and antiseptic wipes available at the boarding gate to passengers traveling from Wuhan to Hong Kong. “Our frontline staff are reminded to maintain good personal and environmental hygiene, and to remain alert and vigilant while being on the lookout for passengers presenting with infectious disease symptoms,” the airline said. Cathay has already been hit by plummeting demand as a result of anti-government protests in Hong Kong, leading it to cut capacity and defer the delivery of four planes. Shares in Cathay have fallen by 10% since the start of January as the virus spread. Jefferies analysts said shares in Cathay and mainland Chinese carriers could remain under pressure for some time if the coronavirus situation paralleled the 2003 SARS outbreak and cases continued to increase. That coronavirus outbreak killed nearly 800 people. Claim: Cathay to let crew wear masks on all flights due to new coronavirus.

Answer: Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd (0293.HK) will allow all crew members and frontline employees to wear surgical masks due to concerns over a new coronavirus, and said passengers to and from Wuhan, China, could change or cancel flights for free through March 31.


Question: 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.

Answer: 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.


Question: Paragraph: The National Health Commission on Sunday also issued a notice asking for improvement in testing capacity and quality nationwide. Nine of the new cases were imported infections, data from commission showed. Authorities reported that total confirmed cases across mainland China had risen to 82,735 with 4,632 deaths as of April 18. The northeastern province of Heilongjiang has seen a rise in infected travellers arriving from Russia in recent weeks, and is now battling to contain a flare-up in local cases. Heilongjiang has reported 39 new local cases in the past 10 days, or more than 50% of all new 73 locally transmitted cases reported in the mainland during the same period. Most were related to one imported case in the provincial capital, Harbin. On Friday, 18 officials in Harbin, including a vice mayor, were punished. To help contain the outbreak, the Heilongjiang government is cautioning against family gatherings, cross infections at hospitals, and slow reporting in epidemic investigations, it said on the provincial government’s website. “The biggest political task at present is to stop the rebound and spread of the epidemic,” Wang Yongkang, vice governor of Heilongjiang, was quoted as saying. Elsewhere in mainland China, all areas in central Hubei province including Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China, are now considered low risk. However, a Beijing central district is seen as high-risk, according to a social media post by the State Council, or Cabinet. On April 15, the Chinese capital reported three local cases, all of which were linked to an imported infection. Areas that are considered of medium-risk in China include two districts in Harbin, the city of Suifenhe in Heilongjiang, two districts in the southern city of Guangzhou and Jiaozhou city in eastern Shandong province. Separately, authorities reported 44 new asymptomatic cases of coronavirus, including three which were imported. Such cases, where patients test positive but show no clinical symptoms such as a cough or fever, are excluded from China’s tally of confirmed cases. In urging better testing, the National Health Commission said all large general hospitals need to set up laboratories that meet certain requirements and can conduct coronavirus testing independently. Since March, an average 54,000 tests have been conducted a day in Hubei province and that rose to 89,000 tests on April 17, Liu Dongru, a Hubei health commission official, told a news conference on Sunday. In Beijing, the number of institutions able to conduct nucleic acid testing has risen to 50 from 17 in early February, a municipal health commission official said on Sunday. In areas under great pressure, especially at land borders, local governments should help county-level medical institutions obtain nucleic acid testing capability, the commission said. Testing should be conducted by qualified medical institutions and independent medical laboratories, it said, adding that training for medical staff should be stepped up and testing operations standardised to reduce problems with the accuracy of testing. Claim: China's new coronavirus cases fall, eyes on northeastern province.

Answer:
China on Sunday reported 16 new coronavirus cases but no deaths while authorities remained on guard against a major resurgence and monitored the spread of cases in Heilongjiang province.