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.

Paragraph: A bill that would allow trained pharmacists to administer the influenza vaccine to children 12 years and older cleared the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee in a 17-7 vote this year, but it later died on the Senate calendar due to inaction. Bill supporter, Nathan Tinker, CEO of the Connecticut Pharmacists Association, said his organization doesn’t plan to push hard for it again in the next regular legislative session because he is worried the debate over the General Assembly’s efforts to scrap a religious exemption for some vaccines will ultimately spill over into discussions about the flu shot and likely doom the bill in the short, three-month session. “There is a community of people who are concerned about the impact or potential impact, whether real or perceived, about vaccines,” Tinker said. “And they get a lot of attention from legislators and that can make it difficult.” When the new legislative session opens in February, lawmakers are expected to consider ending the state’s longstanding religious exemption after newly released data showed a continued decline in immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella among kindergarteners. That proposal has already met resistance and some of the concerns raised are like the ones voiced during this year’s discussion of the flu vaccine bill. Legislators were flooded with testimony earlier this year from parents with concerns about whether making the vaccine more convenient could lead to injuries that pharmacists might not be trained recognize. Others questioned the motives of the pharmaceutical industry and necessity of flu shots. Dr. Sandra Carbonari, a primary care pediatrician in Waterbury and the medical director of the Connecticut Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, also opposed the bill, but for different reasons. She questioned whether state regulations for providing the flu vaccine to children who receive Medicaid benefits might ultimately make the shot too expensive, and whether DPH’s vaccine program can handle a large increase in the number of providers. She also noted that immunizing a child can be complicated. “Determining the appropriate vaccine for a pediatric age patient is not simple and requires accurate information about the medical history and current state of health,” she said in written testimony. Supporters of the flu shot bill argue that allowing parents to drop by a pharmacy, rather than make an appointment with a pediatrician, would ultimately lead to higher flu immunization rates. The bill had the support of the state’s Department of Public Health, which noted three children in Connecticut died from flu-related complications during the 2017-18 flu season. Pharmacists in Connecticut are currently allowed to vaccinate people 18 years or older. According to DPH, individuals under 18 can be administered the flu vaccine by advanced practice registered nurses at retail locations, such as a CVS MinuteClinic. Sen. Heather Somers, of Groton, the top Senate Republican on the Public Health Committee who co-sponsored this year’s bill, stressed that the legislation is voluntary and requires the consent of a parent or guardian. Somers contends the legislature just ran out of time to act on the bill earlier this year, and she plans to resurrect it when lawmakers convene again in February for the 2020 session. “This is something that saves lives,” said Somers, who helped to organize a mobile flu clinic in her district last year. “I think accessibility is key in our health care system.” Claim: Bill allowing pharmacists to give kids the flu shot at risk.
The contentious debate about whether Connecticut lawmakers should scrap a religious exemption for certain childhood vaccinations could inadvertently end up sinking efforts to make the flu vaccine more accessible to children.

Paragraph: Health Minister Olivier Veran told a briefing he could not determine at this stage when the lockdown would end. If the government were to follow the scientific council’s advice, France would remain at a virtual standstill until April 28. A statement by the council, which advises President Emmanuel Macron on the coronavirus crisis, also said the lockdown was the only really efficient strategy at the moment and “needs to be strictly implemented”. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Monday the widespread lockdown in France could last several more weeks and his government was tightening restrictions on daily life even further. Veran also said France would heed World Health Organization recommendations to increase coronavirus testing. Health agency chief Jerome Salomon said later France would soon be able to conduct 10,000 tests a day. Salomon reported 240 new deaths from coronavirus on Tuesday for a total of 1,100, an increase of 28% that made France the fifth nation to cross the 1,000-fatalities threshold after - China, Italy, Iran and Spain. This tally only accounts for people who died in public hospitals, whereas several retirement homes have been reporting deaths in the double digits. Salomon said health authorities would soon be able to tabulate data coming from retirement homes, which will likely trigger a more dramatic increase in registered fatalities. He said the total number of infections in France had risen to 22,300, a 12% jump in 24 hours. Salomon added that 2,516 people were in a serious condition requiring life support, up by 21% from Monday, and that 8,000 hospital beds were now equipped with ventilators. Claim: French coronavirus death toll tops 1,000, lockdown likely to be extended.
France became the fifth country to report more than 1,000 deaths from coronavirus on Tuesday and a government body dealing with the outbreak suggested the national lockdown imposed last week for an initial 15 days should last at least six weeks.

Paragraph: While one could argue that we should give the release a pass given the early stage of the research, the drugs discussed are commercially available and it would have been easy to provide cost information. The release provides insufficient detail regarding what occurred in this study and the outcomes that were reported. The release states that “both drugs were effective in activating OPCs to enhance myelination and reverse paralysis. As a result, almost all of the animals regained the use of their hind limbs.” But how many animals were studied, and how many of them regained use of their limbs? Was there total resolution of symptoms or only partial resolution, and how was this measured? The release never quantifies these results. Dr. Tesar provides a cautionary note related to the potential harms of this approach; “Off-label use of the current forms of these drugs is more likely to increase other health concerns than alleviate multiple sclerosis symptoms.” Given the stage of research, we think this is sufficient to rate this criterion as satisfactory Our major concern with the description of evidence is that the release waits too long to inform readers that these results were obtained in petri dishes and mice. We have to read more than halfway through the release to learn of this crucial caveat. We also had concerns about the headline as noted above in the Review Summary section. To its credit, the news release does provide an important cautionary statement: “…more research is needed before miconazole and clobetasol can be tested in multiple sclerosis clinical trials.” But this statement, coming late in the release, is too little to counterbalance the enthusiasm generated earlier in the release based on an incomplete and possibly misleading description of the evidence. No disease mongering is evident. We are told up front that the study was funded by a division within the National Institutes of Health, and there is no apparent conflict of interest according to the paper. The news release earns a Satisfactory rating by speaking to the current treatments that are available: “Current therapies for multiple sclerosis include anti-inflammatory drugs, which help prevent the episodic relapses common in multiple sclerosis, but are less effective at preventing long-term disability.” To earn extra credit here, the release could have provided a comment about other research into improving myelin production. This includes ongoing clinical trials being conducted by Biogen and others targeting myelin production in MS. The story makes it clear that the two drugs highlighted (clobetasol and miconazole) are available and adds the important precatuionary note, “…are currently approved for use as creams or powders on the surfaces of the body but their safety administered in other forms, such as injections, in humans is unknown.” This is indeed first of its kind research and that is appropriately noted in the news release. With the possible exception of the headline — an issue we’ve already addressed elsewhere in this review — no hyperbole is evident. Claim: Drugs that activate brain stem cells may reverse multiple sclerosis

Our review team had a lively debate as to the extent to which this National Institutes of Health news release exaggerates the findings of the study it reports on. We agreed that the release waits far too long to warn readers that this exciting study of potential multiple sclerosis drugs was conducted in petri dishes and mice. One has to read through more than half of the release before that crucial caveat is introduced. But we had mixed opinions about the headline, “Drugs that activate brain stem cells may reverse multiple sclerosis.” Some of us felt this was misleading because readers would assume the release is talking about human disease, and there’s nothing in the release or the underlying study to support a “reversal” of disease in humans. The opposing view is that the headline accurately reflects what happened in the study in mice and is therefore not an exaggeration. According to this view, the release is deficient mainly because it failed to qualify that the findings were from mice in a timely manner (ideally the first paragraph), but not because of the headline. We welcome reader perspectives on this debate in the comments. The lackluster performance of the pharmaceutical industry in developing new treatments has led to coordinated efforts to repurpose existing drugs for new uses. The research highlighted in this NIH news release is important because it represents one of the earliest examples for this new form of drug development. Multiple sclerosis can be a devastating disease causing significant dysfunction and early death in some patients. Treatments at the moment consist of drugs that target the immune system. While effective, they come with a host of side effects and are very costly. The approach highlighted here provides a potentially new avenue of attack: promoting myelin repair. With that said, this is very early in the game and the drugs — clobetasol and miconazole — have only been shown to work in the test tube and in a mouse model. As we have said on many occasions, success in the mouse model is just that: success in the mouse model.