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.

[EX Q]: While governments in at least 20 other states obtained more than 30 million doses of the drug through donations from the federal reserve or private companies, Oklahoma and Utah instead bought them from private pharmaceutical companies. Top officials in both states chalked up the decisions to “the fog of war.”  Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday defended the state’s $2 million purchase, saying the drug was showing some promise. His health secretary attributed buying the 1.2 million hydroxychloroquine pills to something that happens in the “fog of war.”  Utah Gov. Gary Herbert at first defended the state’s $800,000 purchase of 20,000 packets of hydroxychloroquine compounded with zinc, but has since ordered an investigation of a no-bid contract with a local company that had been promoting the drugs. Herbert, a Republican, also canceled an additional plan to spend $8 million more to buy 200,000 additional treatments from the same company. A left-leaning nonprofit group in Utah filed a price gouging complaint Tuesday with state regulators, arguing the $40 per pack drug was grossly overpriced. Oklahoma’s attorney general requested an investigative audit on Tuesday of its Department of Health over spending and warned the agency about retaliating against employees who report wrongful government activities under the state’s Whistleblower Act. A spokesman for Attorney General Mike Hunter declined to comment on whether the request was related to the $2 million spent on the drug. Doctors can already prescribe the malaria drug to patients with COVID-19, a practice known as off-label prescribing, and many do. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday warned doctors against prescribing hydroxychloroquine for treating the coronavirus outside of hospitals or research settings because of reports of serious side effects, including irregular heart rhythms and death among patients. Preliminary results from a recent study done on coronavirus patients at U.S. veterans hospitals showed no benefit, casting more doubt on the drug’s efficacy during the pandemic. Those were the latest admonitions against the drug that Trump has regularly promoted in public appearances, touting its potential despite his own health advisors telling him it is unproven. Oklahoma acquired 1.2 million pills, or about 100,000 doses, on April 4 from FFF Enterprises, a California-based medical supply wholesaler, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. Oklahoma state Rep. Melissa Provenzano, a Democrat from Tulsa, said the state’s purchase shows that Gov. Stitt’s actions don’t follow his claim that he relies on data to drive his decisions. “Two million dollars is a lot of money to waste, especially when we have unemployment claims approved yet going unpaid, health care professionals without proper protective equipment, and diagnosed cases and deaths continuing to rise,” Provenzano said. Stitt, a first-term Republican, said hydroxychloroquine was showing some promise as a treatment in early March, and he didn’t want Oklahoma to miss out on an opportunity to acquire it. “Now there’s some evidence the chloroquine may not be as effective, but I was being proactive to try and protect Oklahomans,” Stitt said Tuesday when asked about the purchase. “That’s always going to be my first instinct, to get the equipment and things we need that I’m seeing in the future would help Oklahomans.” Oklahoma’s Secretary of Health Jerome Loughridge said several physicians, including some in Oklahoma, were previously optimistic about the drug’s promise in treating COVID-19. He added that the drug is also useful for treating lupus and some other auto-immune diseases, so the state’s supply “will not have gone to waste.” “When we were battling sort of the fog of war at that point, we certainly acquired it on the potential that it would have utility,” Loughridge said. Jeff Burton, a former adjutant general of the Utah National Guard chosen to lead the state health department’s coronavirus task force, offered a similar explanation for why the state made its purchase. He said the state never received the pills and is trying to get its money back. “I chalk it up to fog of war,” Burton told the state’s pharmacy board. “There was a lot going on. It’s easy to judge it from (an) easy chair.. . . Since then we’ve decided that was not a wise purchase.”  Doctors in Oklahoma have been using the drug to treat patients with COVID-19, often in conjunction with a second drug, azithromiocin, but the results “just are not that promising,” said Dr. Douglas Drevets, chief of infectious diseases at University of Oklahoma Medicine. FFF Enterprises said it’s the company’s policy not to comment on transactions with customers. Utah gave a local company called Meds in Motion the $800,000 contract without taking bids from other companies under emergency procurement rules, said Christopher Hughes, director of Utah’s division of purchasing. State officials haven’t explained why they didn’t seek to get the drugs for free. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Saturday it has sent out 28.6 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate free of cost to states around the country. Several states including New York, Connecticut and Texas received donations of the medication from a private company based in New Jersey called Amneal Pharmaceutical, according to information compiled by The Associated Press. Utah taxpayers deserve to know what happened to allow a purchase that seems like a company taking advantage of the early, chaotic days of the pandemic, said Chase Thomas, executive director of the group called Alliance for a Better Utah that submitted the price gouging complaint. The complaint alleges Utah paid at least double the common price for the medication. “Whether they were buying drugs we didn’t need or paying too much for it when they could have gotten them for free, there just needed to be a lot more thought going into this,” Thomas said. Meds in Motion didn’t answer an email seeking comment about the allegations. Herbert declined to provide an update Tuesday about the investigation of the purchase. He said Friday the state’s legal counsel would aim to find out what, how and why it happened. He said he believed state officials acted in good faith as they scrambled to slow the spread of coronavirus, but acknowledged a mistake may have been made. “I have some questions about how it came about,” Herbert said Friday. “Bottom line is, we’re not purchasing any more of this drug.”  ___ McCombs and Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City.
[EX A]: Oklahoma, Utah face scrutiny over malaria drug purchases.

[EX Q]: Democrats on a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform released a cache of internal Juul emails and other documents that committee staff described as early attempts to “enter schools and convey its messaging directly to teenage children.”   Juul’s use of social media influencers to promote its vaping devices in the years after it launched in 2015 also came under scrutiny. James Monsees, Juul’s co-founder and chief product officer, told the committee that the company’s target audience from the beginning has been adult cigarette smokers. Among efforts cited in the Juul documents released were a $134,000 payment to set up a five-week “holistic health education” summer camp at a Maryland charter school, recruiting children from third through 12th grades, and offering $10,000 to schools using the company’s “youth prevention and education” programs for students, including those caught using e-cigarette products. “You don’t think that sounds strange at all?” Representative Katie Hill, a Democrat, asked Juul’s chief administrative officer, Ashley Gould. “All of these educational efforts were intended to keep youth from using the product,” Gould responded. When Juul realized how the school involvement could be perceived as negative, “we stopped the program,” she said. In a statement after the hearing, Juul said the $134,000 donation was to “facilitate already-existing community outreach and youth-prevention programs,” and said the company “did not have any direct interaction with the students.”  Several committee members said Juul’s initiatives appeared similar to past efforts by the tobacco industry to reach young people under the guise of smoking prevention programs. Gould said Juul, which is 35 percent owned by Marlboro maker Altria Group Inc (MO.N), halted its program last year once it became aware of the tobacco industry’s past moves. Caleb Mintz, 17, a New York city high school student, testified at a separate hearing on Wednesday that a Juul representative came to his school as part of an educational program on mental health and addiction last year. He said in an interview Thursday that students received “mixed messages” about the product, being told it was safe but not to buy it. Mintz said after the hearing that the Juul presentation seemed to be “playing to the side of teens as rebellious. When a teen is told not to do something, they’re more likely to do it.”    Members of the committee also quizzed Gould and Monsees over the use of social media influencers to promote Juul’s vaping devices. Company executives early on agreed that “younger consumers age 25 to 34 was going to be the target of our initial campaign,” Monsees said. “They would be more receptive to new technology solutions,” such as the Juul device. Amid an enormous uptick in teenage use of e-cigarettes in 2018 — a 78% increase among high school students from 2017 to 2018, according to federal data — Juul said it ended all social media advertising last fall. Juul also pulled many flavored nicotine pods, except mint, menthol and tobacco, from retail stores, which Monsees said represented more than half of the company’s sales at that time.
[EX A]: U.S. lawmakers grill e-cigarette maker Juul over efforts targeted at schoolchildren.

[EX Q]: Best Buy Co. said Wednesday that in five years it hopes to provide 5 million seniors with health monitoring services, which can range from sensors placed throughout a home to a pendant worn around the neck. It currently provides the service to 1 million. It’s part of the chain’s deeper push into the $3.5 trillion U.S. health care market and essential to its goal of reaching $50 billion in annual revenue by 2025. The Minneapolis-based chain is tapping into an aging U.S. population, noting that two out of three seniors live with two or more chronic conditions and many want to stay at home. Best Buy is also looking to dig deeper into health care at a time when it, like other retailers, face uncertainty regarding an escalating trade war with China. Some of its core businesses, like TVs and phones sales, have been sluggish, although it says the consumer electronics business is stable. The strategy comes as Best Buy has succeeded in holding off increasing competition from Amazon and other players by speeding up deliveries and adding more services to deepen its relationship with customers. “This is an environment driven by constant innovation and people who need help with technology,” CEO Corie Barry said at an investor conference Wednesday where executives unveiled a five-year growth plan. Best Buy has been on buying spree of its own to boost the health care business. In May, it acquired Critical Signal Technologies, a provider of personal emergency response systems and telehealth monitoring services for at-home seniors. In August, it acquired the predictive health care technology business of BioSensics, including the hiring of the company’s data science and engineering team. Last year, it bought GreatCall, which provides emergency response devices for the aging. It also hired its own chief medical officer to push those efforts: Daniel Grossman, a physician, will report to Asheesh Saksena, head of Best Buy Health. Insurers have been paying more for remote monitoring technology to help track issues like chronic conditions and keep patients healthy and out of hospitals. That technology can include special wireless scales to monitor patients with congestive heart failure. Saksena told investors that pendants using certain algorithms can track how a senior is walking and predict the risk of falling. He also noted that sensors on refrigerators detect how often it’s being used. That can trigger a call by GreatCall agent to see whether that person has been eating. ___ AP Health Writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report. ___ Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio
[EX A]:
Best Buy sees growth in health care technology for elderly.