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.

Example Input: The Health Department said Wednesday that different variations of the virus are circulating in different parts of the state. The agency says 21 pneumonia and flu deaths have been reported so far this season. Last season, 237 New Mexicans died of pneumonia and/or influenza. Symptoms may include rapid onset of illness with fever, cough, sore throat, headache and/or muscle aches. New Mexico Health Secretary Kathyleen Kunkel says with the holidays approaching, it’s important that people take preventive measures such as getting vaccinated, covering coughs and staying home when sick. Officials say the peak of the flu season is still to come.
Example Output: Health officials: Flu activity widespread in New Mexico.

Example Input: A University of Iowa study shows the state’s contribution to the Gulf dead zone spiked 47 percent to 618 million pounds in 2016, based on five-year running annual averages. “Just based on water quality data, I think we can say we’ve not made much progress over the past 20 years in terms of nitrogen,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer at the UI’s IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering. Environmentalists say the study raises new questions about the effectiveness of Iowa’s approach to improving water quality and its reliance on voluntary ag compliance. “We’ve been pouring state and federal money into cutting nutrient pollution for decades, and this highlights the fact that the voluntary approach is not working,” said Jennifer Terry, executive director of the Iowa Environmental Council. “We’re not headed in the right direction. ... We need to follow the lead of other states and pass some environmental laws that will actually reduce loads and result in cleaner water,” Terry said. The Des Moines Register reports that the news comes as Iowa marks the five-year anniversary of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, a plan designed to cut by 45 percent the nitrogen and phosphorus levels that leave Iowa and feed Gulf hypoxia — or the dead zone. Oxygen levels within the zone are so low that marine life can no longer survive, threatening the Gulf’s seafood industry. Most of the nutrient losses come from farming, although the strategy also targets losses from urban wastewater and industrial operations. Last year, Iowa invested $420 million in those water quality improvements, including helping farmers plant cover crops, build terraces and tackle other conservation practices that hold nutrients in place. But farmers expanding their drainage tile systems — along with increasing hog, cattle and chicken feeding operations, which provide manure to fertilize crops — likely outweigh those conservation efforts, UI scientists say. The nutrient reduction practices “being implemented are a tiny, tiny portion of what needs to be done, and it’s occurring in a system that’s changing,” Jones said. “We appreciate all that is being done with nutrient management and conservation farming. Unfortunately, we’re just impacting too few acres with too few practices,” added Larry Weber, executive associate dean for UI’s College of Engineering. Jones wrote the study with Weber and Keith Schilling, another UI research engineer. Increased nutrient pollution in water creates problems for people and animals beyond the dead zone. High phosphorus levels can lead to toxic algae blooms that can befoul lakes, rivers and streams, potentially killing pets and making people ill. And the federal government limits the amount of nitrates in drinking water to 10 milligrams per liter. Higher levels can be fatal to babies under 6 months old. Increased levels translate to higher costs for utilities for nitrate removal. “We need a dramatic increase, a rapidly-scaled up increase in conservation practices and more funding,” said Cindy Lane, the Iowa Environmental Council’s water program director. Schilling said the study shows that targeting nutrient reduction investment in Iowa can have a significant impact downstream. “Iowa has a dominant role in this Gulf hypoxia issue,” Schilling said. “Let’s invest the resources here, where we really need it. “If we solve Iowa, we solve the Gulf,” he said. The UI study gives Iowans new information in the fight to reduce the nitrogen levels that flow from the state into the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which make their way to the Gulf of Mexico. Looking at Iowa Department of Natural Resources data from 23 monitoring stations, the study shows Iowa on average over the past 18 years contributed 29 percent of the total nitrogen headed to the Gulf from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya river basin. The river basin is a massive watershed that includes all or part of 31 states. Iowa’s nitrogen impact was even greater in other watersheds. The state averaged 45 percent of the nitrogen levels going into the Upper Mississippi River basin, and 55 percent of the nitrogen going into to the Missouri River basin. “When you look at the entire Missouri (River) watershed, our land comprises 3.3 percent of the total area ... and Iowa contributes nearly 12 percent of the water,” Jones said. But “we contribute 55 percent of the nitrate,” he said. “The way that pencils out is that the amount of water coming from Iowa has seven times more nitrates than the rest of the Missouri River watershed,” Jones said. If Iowa’s contributions were removed, the Missouri River would have little nitrogen contributions in some years. “We really need to take seriously the Missouri River’s contribution as a driver for Gulf hypoxia,” Jones said. The growing concentration of livestock feeding operations in western Iowa might account for Iowa’s large contribution to the Missouri River nitrate levels, the scientists said. “People tend to dismiss livestock influences, but maybe there’s more to it than people give credit it for,” Schilling said, adding that it would require more study to determine the impact. Iowa’s nitrogen levels, based on running five-year annual averages, have been above the 2003 value for 10 consecutive years, the study says. The scientists say 2003 was the first year the five-year rolling average could be calculated, with data that starts in 1999. The goal of the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force, made up of federal, state and tribal leaders, “will be very difficult to achieve if nitrate retention cannot be improved in Iowa,” the report said. The task force, with Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig as chairman, seeks to reduce the dead zone to 1,900 square miles by 2035. The deadline was extended from 2015. Last year, the dead zone set a record, which, at 8,776 square miles, was more than four times the goal size. The report says about 90 percent of Iowa’s nitrogen levels “can be sourced to the 72 percent of the state’s land area that is in crop cultivation.” Iowa, an agriculture powerhouse, is a national leader in corn, soybean, pork, egg and beef production. “This intense production of carbohydrates and protein has resulted in the state being a leading contributor” to the nitrogen loads and Gulf hypoxia, the report said. Naig said farmers understand the important role they play in improving water quality and are scaling up efforts across the state “as we move from demonstration projects to larger, watershed-scale implementation projects. “We recognize that there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are on the right path,” said Naig, who adds farmers are working with more than 250 partners in 65 rural and urban demonstration projects. The UI scientists doubt that increased cropping is the reason for the increased nitrogen impact. Iowa’s cropped area has increased only 4 percent over the past 18 years, while other states’ farmed land has climbed 21 percent, particularly in Minnesota, North and South Dakota and Kansas. About 85 percent of Iowa’s acres are farmed, making it the fifth-highest in the nation, based on the 2012 U.S. Agriculture Census, so there are few acres left that can be brought into production compared with other states. “Iowa’s decline in the share of the region’s soybean area was especially pronounced, dropping from 18.6 percent in 1999 to 14.5 percent in 2016,” the report said. “One would expect our (nitrogen) contributions relative to the other areas would be diminished,” Jones said. “But the opposite has occurred.” Jones said it’s led the scientists to consider other factors. The scientists doubt that Iowa farmers are using significantly more fertilizer. “When we look at nitrogen sales data, it might change a little year over year. But on a per acre basis, that hasn’t changed a lot since 1990,” he said. And with little increase in corn and soybean acres, the scientists speculate that Iowa’s increased nitrogen levels could be coming from more drainage tiles. Or farmers could be using more manure as fertilizer from animal feeding operations. Without Iowa, the Gulf’s overall nitrate loads would have declined 43,400 tons over 18 years, based on five-year running annual averages, the scientists’ data show. Instead nitrate loads grew by 52,000 tons. “It’s pretty clear these loads from the Ohio basin have to be declining,” Jones said. “A lot that is coming from Indiana.” That state’s high level of cover crop adoption by farmers could be the reason, he said, and should be studied. Cover crops such as cereal rye slow the rate of water runoff, reduce erosion and improve soil fertility. Iowa also needs to honestly discuss the impact that drainage tiling has on nitrogen losses, Jones said. Iowa doesn’t collect data on how much underground drainage runs through the state, although officials estimate about 9 million acres are drained through tile. Environmentalists believe the number is much higher. Underground drainage tile helps improve yields by quickly removing excess water from fields. Iowa’s tiling system consists of a network of drainage lines that feed into large pipes. The massive network, first constructed in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, turned once swampy lands into some of the nation’s most productive farmland. But water quickly carried away by the tiling system misses cleansing that would naturally occur by filtering through soil or the roots of trees, shrubs and grasses in riparian buffers along streams. Des Moines Water Works unsuccessfully sued drainage districts in three north Iowa counties in 2015, claiming underground tiles funneled high levels of nitrates into the Raccoon River, a source of drinking water for 500,000 central Iowa residents. “We acknowledge that it’s important to track implemented conservation, and we encourage that,” Jones said. “But we also need to have the courage to talk about these things that drive the system in the other direction.” Terry said Iowa is “one of the most heavily tiled states in the nation,” and its 110-year-old law regulating the practice does little to protect water quality. ___ Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com
Example Output: Study: Iowa nitrogen pollution in the water is getting worse.

Example Input: "Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and his allies, challenged the president’s top health official recently on the administration’s handling of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak. Dobbs criticized Health and Human Secretary Alex Azar over a lack of transparency in the agency’s handling of COVID-19, which has infected nearly 91,000 people globally across 73 countries and led to more than nine American deaths. ""There’s a better ratio of testing for the coronavirus in other countries than we maintain here,"" Dobbs said during the March 2 interview on his TV show. ""We’re actually screening fewer people because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Azar countered that the Trump administration has taken recent steps to roll back regulations and increase the availability of diagnostic test kits to ""hundreds and thousands and millions."" The United States is set to significantly expand its testing capabilities in the coming days and weeks, but Dobbs is correct that the country has lagged behind other nations so far. ""It is true that diagnostic capacity in the U.S. has been lower than in some other countries, but that is changing,"" said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It’s hard to pinpoint how many people have been tested for the coronavirus, both in the U.S. and around the world. The World Health Organization doesn’t track the number of tests administered in each country, and the numbers that are available are constantly updating. In a statement to PolitiFact, a Fox News spokesperson representing Dobbs cited data from the WorldOMeter, a real-time tool that ""shows estimated current numbers based on statistics and projections from the most reputable official organizations,"" according to its website. Using estimates derived from official government sources, the WorldOMeter says at least eight countries — South Korea, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland, Vietnam and Turkey — have given more tests relative to the size of their populations than the United States. That lines up with experts’ analyses and with what multiple news outlets have reported. Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said South Korea ""has screened at least thousands, and Guangdong, China, has screened at least hundreds of thousands,"" citing a WHO report on the outbreak in China, where the virus was first detected. South Korea ramped up testing by building drive-thru screening clinics for speedy assessments, according to local reports. Other countries, like Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Italy have also conducted thousands of diagnostic tests. ""We have done nothing like what other countries have done,"" Lipsitch said, noting that the U.S. had, until recently, limited not only the number of labs that were allowed to conduct tests on suspected cases, but also the number of patients that were eligible to be screened. It’s difficult to say just how far behind the U.S. has fallen, due to the murkiness around the number of administered tests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped releasing a public count of tests on March 2. The administration’s public statements haven’t cleared it up. On Feb. 29, the CDC reported testing 472 Americans. A day later, Azar told ABC News the U.S. had tested over 3,600 people. And a spokesperson for HHS, Azar’s agency, told us on March 3 that the CDC had tested samples from more than 1,200 patients. ""I don't know how to track U.S. tests any more,"" Lipsitch said. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks at the White House about the coronavirus on Feb. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP/Vucci) The CDC stopped posting testing data as more state and local public-health labs have been brought into the fold, said Nancy Messonnier, a top CDC official, said during a March 3 briefing. ""With more and more testing done at states, these numbers would not be representative of the testing being done nationally,"" she said. An HHS spokesperson told us that the department doesn’t know how many additional tests have been administered by those state and local labs, adding that those labs can now test up to 15,000 people and are expected to be able to test as many as 75,000 people by March 6. The U.S. test count should rise into the millions as IDT, a commercial manufacturer, and other commercial and academic labs begin producing their own tests soon, according to HHS. The government’s initial testing effort was hindered by flaws with the CDC’s early test kits and restrictions that had limited which labs could run the tests and which patients could be tested. When the first U.S. coronavirus was detected, the country brushed aside the WHO test used by other nations and leaned on the CDC to develop and mass produce a more complicated test capable of detecting other viruses in addition to the coronavirus, according to reports. The test kits went out in early February. But some state labs that received them reported that flaws in the tests were triggering inconclusive results. Those states had to ship samples out to the CDC’s offices in Atlanta for results until the CDC fixed the problem weeks later. Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has given labs and hospitals across the country the go-ahead to administer their own tests before the FDA finishes reviewing them, so long as those tests are proven to work. That should lead to more testing, experts said. The CDC also modified its screening criteria to expand testing for some people with severe respiratory symptoms who did not travel to China or come into known contact with a coronavirus patient. Previously, travel to China or exposure to the virus were preconditions for screening. Adequate testing is essential to getting an accurate count of U.S. cases, experts said. Testing is also key for treating patients and identifying people who might be infected but don’t show symptoms, said Richard Watanabe, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. ""The latest data suggests the incubation period for COVID-19 can be as long as a couple of weeks,"" Watanabe said. Despite the recent acceleration, Lipsitch said U.S. testing is happening ""very slowly and at a level that is still paltry"" compared with some other countries. Dobbs said that the United States is ""actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Experts told us that to date, the United States has lagged behind other countries, though numbers are imprecise. An error with the CDC’s early test kits contributed to the United States’ relatively low screening numbers. The administration has taken steps to make testing more widely available. With that additional information."
Example Output:
The United States is “actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don't have appropriate testing.