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.
question:
The disease being called “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome” was identified and treated at Seattle Children’s Hospital, KUOW reported. King County Public Health said the patient was a resident of Snohomish County and there have been no other confirmed cases in the area. It involves a “hyper response” of the child’s immune system to the virus, according to Dr. Michael Portman, who directs pediatric cardiovascular research at Children’s. It can lead to inflammation of the blood vessels, and affect the heart’s arteries, leading to coronary aneurysms. In similar diseases, that can lead to lifelong heart issues, Portman said. The syndrome is rare and most children infected with the virus develop only mild illness. The disease is being linked to COVID-19, Portman said, because almost all of the patients have had confirmed cases of the virus, positive antibody tests, or known exposure. Portman said it is very similar and at times appears almost identical to a disease called “Kawasaki disease,” which was identified in Japan in the 1960s. According to Portman, Kawasaki disease is fairly common at Seattle Children’s. Around 30% patients at Children’s with Kawasaki disease are of Asian descent, Portman said. But the disease “seems to affect Hispanic and black children more severely” due to a “more robust inflammatory response.” Most of the cases of the new syndrome have been in the New York area and a handful have been fatal. Portman’s advice to parents is “not to freak out,” but if a child has a persistent fever, which is a symptom, he recommends getting it checked.
answer:
Seattle sees 1st case of childhood disease tied to virus.


question:
So far, Somalia has reported only three cases. But if the disease is unleashed, it could spread like wildfire through camps housing malnourished families who huddle under makeshift domes built from sticks and rags. Many of the 2.4 million Somalis displaced by conflict and other disasters live in such camps. Out of a total population of 15 million, around six million Somalis may not have enough to eat this year, the United Nations says, weakening their immune systems and ability to survive the pandemic. Islamist al Shabaab insurgents also hold parts of southern Somalia, making it hard for health workers to visit and impossible to do testing there. “I have witnessed wars, cholera, dysentery,” Ahmed, tall and bespectacled, told Reuters. “A doctor who fears for his life cannot save people. I have learned to forget worrying and instead help rescue people.”  A decade ago, al Shabaab seized him as he was trying to stem a cholera epidemic in territory they held. They had seen a cross inside his ambulance and - wrongly assuming it meant he was a foreign spy - arrested him and his team. A phone call from a high-level contact saved their lives, he said. Right now, Somalia only has about 25 intensive care beds, 110 quarantine beds and 100 treatment beds available, Ahmed said. More are being built. In the capital, patients at the old Italian-built maternity Martini Hospital have been moved out to make way for a new coronavirus ward. The sound of hammering echoes through its wide, tree-lined compound as construction workers rush to finish repairs. The health ministry and prime minister’s office have allocated about $11 million for coronavirus preparation, Ahmed said. Expenses are high - all medical equipment is imported and coronavirus tests are sent to Kenya for processing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has trained 500 health workers in Somalia since January, said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, the organization’s country representative. The WHO also brought in personal protective equipment to handle the first 300 or 400 cases, Malik added. Ahmed’s biggest worry is that the disease may spread very fast. Somalia has a tradition of physical greetings, and even wealthy people are reluctant to quarantine away from family. Many, like Faduma Abdikadir, simply have nowhere to isolate themselves. The 38-year-old mother is sleeping under a tree in a makeshift camp in the capital Mogadishu with her eight children, having fled fighting in the countryside. “Most of the time we use ashes and sand to wash hands. We are hungry. We beg people to buy water to drink and wash our hands,” she said.
answer:
Somali doctor, veteran of many battles, girds for war with coronavirus.


question:
Western wildfires have grown ever more lethal, a grim reality that’s been driven by more housing developments sprawling into the most fire-prone grasslands and brushy canyons, experts say. Many of the ranchers and farmers who once managed those landscapes are gone, leaving neglected terrain that has grown thick with vegetation that can explode into flames when sparked. That’s left communities ripe for tragedy as whipping winds and recurring drought that’s characteristic of climate change stoke wildfires like the ones still raging in Northern and Southern California that have killed at least 51 people in recent days. Hundreds of thousands of people were told to leave their homes ahead of the blazes to get out of harm’s way. Yet some experts say there’s been an over-reliance on evacuation and too little attention paid to making communities safe, as well as not enough money for controlled burns and other preventive measures. Search crews found many victims inside their vehicles, or just next to them, overcome by flames, heat and smoke as they tried to flee. Survivors of the blaze that nearly obliterated the Northern California town of Paradise and nearby communities spoke of having just minutes to escape and narrow roads made impassable by flames and traffic jams. “There are ... so many ways that can go wrong, in the warning, the modes of getting the message out, the confusion ... the traffic jams,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension program. As deadly urban wildfires become more common, officials should also consider establishing “local retreat zones, local safety zones” in communities where residents can ride out the deadly firestorms if escape seems impossible, Moritz said. That could be a community center, built or retrofitted to better withstand wildfires, which can exceed 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving little trace of ordinary homes. Such fire protection measures in buildings can include sprinklers, fire- and heat-resistant walls and roofs, and barriers that keep sparks out of chimneys and other openings, according to the International Code Council, a nonprofit that helps develop building codes used widely in the United States. Creating more buffers — whether parks, golf courses or irrigated agriculture, like the vineyards that helped keep 2017 wildfires in California’s wine country from spreading into even more towns — around new and old housing developments would help stave off wildfires threatening to overrun cities and towns. So would burying electric power lines, which can spark and fail in the high winds that drive many of California’s fiercest fires, said Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in California. Sparks from electrical utility equipment are suspects in the Northern California wildfire that consumed Paradise, destroying some 7,700 homes, and other deadly blazes in the state. A proven method to prevent wildfires from getting out of control is the use of controlled burns. By intentionally lighting fires, property owners or land managers can remove dead and low-lying trees and brush — material that otherwise accumulates and can accelerate the growth of fires. In the mid-20th century, California ranchers burned hundreds of thousands of acres annually to manage their lands, said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council. That was phased out in the 1980s after California’s fire management agency stepped in to take over the burns, and by the last decade, the amount of acreage being treated had dropped to less than 10,000 acres annually, Quinn-Davidson said. Former agricultural land that rings many towns in the state became overgrown, even as housing developments pushed deeper into those rural areas. That was the situation in the Northern California town of Redding leading up to a fire that began in July and destroyed more than 1,000 homes. It was blamed for eight deaths. “You get these growing cities pushing out — housing developments going right up into brush and wooded areas. One ignition on a bad day, and all that is threatened,” Quinn-Davidson said. “These fires are tragic, and they’re telling us this is urgent. We can’t sit on our hands.” The latest California fires have fueled debate over the reasons for ever-more deadly wildfires, with President Donald Trump claiming in a tweet Saturday that “gross mismanagement of the forests” was the sole reason the state’s fires had become so “massive, deadly and costly.” He also threatened to withhold federal payments to the state. However, most of California’s deadly fires of recent years have been in grasslands and brushy chaparral, Keeley said. “Most of the fires we’ve been seeing in the last couple years that are the most destructive are not in the forest. Thinning isn’t going to change anything,” he said. Trump’s assertion also ignored the huge federal land holdings in the state and brought a quick backlash, with the president of the California firefighters union describing it as a shameful attack on thousands of firefighters on the front lines. To ease tensions, the White House sent Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to tour fire-damaged areas and offer assistance to California Gov. Jerry Brown. In an interview prior to the two-day visit, which began Wednesday, Zinke struck a conciliatory tone and said federal officials share blame for not managing public forest and rangelands aggressively enough. “We need to work in unison to make sure we thin the forest, especially fire breaks, and make sure we have prescribed burns,” Zinke told The Associated Press. “There’s been a lack of management on Interior lands, on U.S. Forest Service lands and certainly with state lands.” But it’s California, not the Trump administration that is putting more money behind such efforts. In response to the deadly blazes of recent years, California lawmakers in September approved a measure that would provide $1 billion over five years for fire protection, including more controlled burns and projects to thin forests and brush land. By contrast, federal spending on hazardous fuels reduction has been flat in recent years, hovering just under $600 million, even as direct firefighting costs jumped to a record $2.9 billion last year. For 2019, the Forest Service has proposed a $3 million bump for its wildfire fuels program. At Interior, Zinke proposed a $29 million cut in fuel management spending. ___ Knickmeyer reported from Washington. ___ Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MatthewBrownAP
answer:

As wildfires grow deadlier, officials search for solutions.