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: With a bumper crop of blacklegged ticks possible this season, researchers in a Lyme disease-plagued part of New York’s Hudson Valley are tackling tick problems across entire neighborhoods with fungal sprays and bait boxes. The $8.8 million, five-year project aims to find out if treating 24 neighborhoods in Dutchess County for ticks, also known as deer ticks, can significantly reduce cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. “We want to do a better job and actually remove the threat from the neighborhoods, from the places where people are actually exposed to infected ticks,” said Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of New York City. Dutchess County is a patchwork of forests, rolling farmland and thick residential developments that has long been a hotbed of Lyme disease. Tick checks are a common end-of-day routine here, as are inspections for the red, target-shaped rashes associated with tick bites. People spray on tick repellents, treat their clothes with insecticide and even spray their yards. But Ostfeld notes that spraying individual lawns has not proved effective in fighting Lyme disease. So he’s scaling up from one backyard to many. The Tick Project involves more than 900 families in neighborhoods that consist of about 30 to 50 participants. Yards are being treated in the spring and early summer with a fungal spray that kills ticks. Researchers also are deploying bait boxes to attract rodents. An insecticide in the box kills any ticks on mice and chipmunks, two animals largely responsible for infecting ticks with the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Researchers check in with families every two weeks in season to see whether anyone in the house, including cats and dogs, had ticks on them over the period. The Tick Project is funded mostly through a $5 million grant from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, created by the hedge fund manager and his wife. Ostfeld said 2021 is set aside for data analysis, thought they will have some sense of early results within a year. Ostfeld would not divulge which neighborhoods are involved or who is participating, citing the need for privacy and of keeping good relations with participants. Edward Blundell, mayor of the village of Red Hook, mentioned during an interview that he had agreed to take part in the study. While he felt he could take personal steps to protect himself from Lyme disease, he would be satisfied if something comes out of the research. “Let’s let the scientists look at this and give them a mini-lab site here, so we felt our yard could be the mini-site,” Blundell said. Tick researchers say such area-wide studies are complex and difficult to do. They are costly. It can be hard to get all the needed permissions. And variabilities in tick densities over study areas can make the science challenging. Thomas Mather, director of the Tick Encounter Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island, said executing a well-designed study large enough to produce valid results is a “Holy Grail” of tick researchers. Phillip Baker, executive director of the American Lyme Disease Foundation, said the neighborhood approach sounded like a good one but noted that ticks are a resilient parasite. “Ticks have been around for a long, long time,” Baker said, “and there’s no real easy approach to get rid of them.”

SOLUTION: Tick towns: Researchers target neighborhoods in Lyme effort.

PROBLEM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday posted data showing nearly 68,000 drug overdose deaths were reported last year. The number may go up as more investigations are completed, but the agency expects the tally will end up below 69,000. Overdose deaths had been climbing each year since 1990, topping 70,000 in 2017. The numbers were celebrated by the U.S. secretary of health and human services. “Lives are being saved, and we’re beginning to win the fight against this crisis,” Alex Azar wrote in a tweet. But the overdose death rate is still about seven times higher than it was a generation ago. “We’re still in a pretty sad situation that we need to address,” said Rebecca Haffajee, a University of Michigan researcher. Researchers do not believe this is the start of a dramatic decline. Data from the first months of this year likely will show that the decrease is not gaining steam, said Farida Ahmad of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The improvement was driven by a drop in deaths from heroin and prescription painkillers. Those falls were offset somewhat by continuing growth in deaths involving a different opioid, fentanyl, as well as other drugs such cocaine and methamphetamines. Overdose deaths often involve more than one drug. The improvement is not uniform: Some states seem to be making dramatic progress, while deaths continue to rise in others. The preliminary CDC data suggested deaths last year were down by as many as 1,000 or more in Ohio and Pennsylvania — each seeing declines of about 20%. Meanwhile, deaths increased by about 17% in Missouri, which had more than 200 additional deaths. It can take months for authorities to complete toxicology tests and other elements of a death investigation involving drugs. And some states report faster than others. The CDC is expected to report more complete data later this year. The current overdose epidemic has killed more people than any other in U.S. history, and it had been on a soaring trajectory. From 2014 to 2017, overdose deaths jumped by 5,000 or more each year. Experts trace the epidemic’s origins to 1995 and the marketing of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. It was meant be safer and more effective than other prescription opioids, but some patients got hooked and found they could crush the tablets and snort or inject them to get high. Gradually, many turned to cheaper street drugs such as heroin and fentanyl. In 2015, heroin began causing more deaths than prescription painkillers or other drugs. In 2016, fentanyl and its close cousins became the biggest drug killer, and in 2018 they were involved in about 46% of the reported overdose deaths, according to the preliminary CDC data. Strategies to reduce drug overdose deaths have included tougher policing, treatment program expansions, policies to limit opioid painkiller prescriptions and wider distribution of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Haffajee and other researchers are trying to figure out what measures are most responsible for the slight improvement. “It’s complicated because there are so many policies going on, and as an evaluator it’s very hard to separate them out and determine which is working,” she said. Valerie Hardcastle, a Northern Kentucky University administrator who oversees research and other work on local health issues, has seen the overdose epidemic play out in her region, near Cincinnati. She believes a major factor is Narcan, a nasal spray version of naloxone, that has been widely distributed through the efforts of philanthropists and local, state, and federal officials. “It’s fantastic that we have fewer deaths, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But I’m not sure it’s an indication that the opioid problem per se is diminishing. It’s just that we have greater availability of the drugs that will keep us alive.” ___ 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. ___ This story has been corrected to show Ahmad’s first name is Farida, not Farid.

SOLUTION: Number of US overdose deaths appears to be falling.

PROBLEM: “The first shipments should start next week,” said Sudarshan Jain, secretary general of Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA). India is the world’s largest producer of hydroxychloroquine but last month banned most exports to secure its own supplies, drawing warnings of retaliation from Trump. This week India allowed some exports of the drug and Trump has thanked New Delhi for the decision. Jain said companies in India are ramping up capacity to meet the U.S. demand, including Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, IPCA Laboratories and Cadila Healthcare. Cadila has increased production tenfold to 30 metric tonnes per month and is ready to produce more if needed, Managing Director Sharvil Patel told Reuters. Companies are ramping up while battling a three-week nationwide lockdown India imposed on March 25. Cadila is based in western India’s Gujarat state, a drug production hub where industry insiders say the shutdown has forced companies to contend with supply chain disruptions and worker shortages. “There are 28 manufacturers of hydroxychloroquine in Gujarat,” said H.G. Koshia, a senior drugs department official. “All of them have enhanced production in view of rise in demand.”  The IPA’s Jain said firms were confident they could produce adequate quantities to meet both global and domestic demand. “The government is getting a lot of requests from other countries,” Jain noted. India is stocking at least four months’ supply and has agreed to export to at least 30 countries, according to export body Pharmexcil’s estimates. Hydroxychloroquine is unproven as a treatment here but its use has soared as the United States has quickly become the epicentre of the pandemic. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus topped 16,400, while India's death toll stands at 199. here

SOLUTION:
India set to ship drug sought by Trump for coronavirus.