TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: France has already ordered 1 billion masks to ease an acute shortage nationwide that has angered front-line healthcare officials and politicians as the coronavirus outbreak has swept across the country, killing at least 3,523 people. Speaking at a mask-producing factory on Tuesday, Macron said he had ordered a tripling of domestic mask production by the end of April to 10 million and production of 10,000 extra respirators by mid-May. “The priority today is to produce more in Europe and France,” Macron said at the Kolmi-Hopen factory near the western town of Angers. “By the end of the year I want to us to be fully and completely independent (in production),” he said, adding that 4 billion euros ($4.39 billion) had been set aside for the Public Health Authority to buy equipment. The pandemic has triggered a massive surge in demand for protective gear in France and neighboring European countries including Italy and Spain, with the world’s worst and second worst death tolls from the respiratory illness respectively. China, where the virus originated and where countless factories were shut down to contain its spread, accounts for more than half the global production of masks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). New mask producers like car parts maker Faurecia, tire maker Michelin and retailer Intermarché will also push total output to 15 million per week, Macron said. The number of people in France infected with the virus rose to 52,128 on Tuesday, a 17% rise on the previous day. In 2013, France’s previous government took the decision to sharply reduce the number of face masks held in strategic reserve after a public outcry over the cost of bolstering stocks during the H1N1 bird flu crisis. Mask consumption since the onset of the coronavirus crisis has soared from four million per week to more than 40 million, but the state’s pre-crisis inventory of 140 million has proved insufficient as has the import of billions of masks. Nowhere has the shortage been felt more than in hospitals and nursing homes where health professionals have criticized the government’s slow reaction to the unfolding crisis. Sarah, a nurse in a coronavirus wing of a Paris hospital, told Reuters on Tuesday that the lack of masks for staff, but also patients, was getting worse despite government pledges. “Each patient should have their own mask, but we don’t have enough to change them and some don’t even have any. I had one (patient) who coughed on me and we didn’t have any gel left either to disinfect,” she said. “What makes me angry is that we don’t have the equipment to protect ourselves. Who will look after the patients when we fall sick?”    The management of the crisis, which has halt the economy and forced the government to lock down France until at least April 15, has also been condemned by opposition lawmakers. Far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday the government had lied about “absolutely everything, without any exceptions”. Macron hit back on Tuesday. “When we fight a battle, we must be united to win it and I think that all those who are already trying to hold trials when we have not won the war are irresponsible,” he said. “The time will come for accountability.” Claim: Amid criticism, Macron vows to raise medical gear output to tackle coronavirus.

SOLUTION: President Emmanuel Macron pledged on Tuesday to make France self-sufficient in protective masks by year-end and learn lessons from the coronavirus emergency, firing back at growing criticism of his government over painful equipment shortages.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The public-private partnership includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, among others. The funding announcement was made after a meeting of GAVI’s board. GAVI said the investment, which it called an estimate, will be provided between now and 2025. Since the current outbreak in eastern Congo was identified last August, health officials have immunized more than 255,000 people with a recently licensed vaccine made by Merck. To date there have been nearly 3,200 confirmed Ebola cases, including more than 2,200 deaths, in what has become the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, chair of Gavi’s board, called the creation of the Ebola vaccine stockpile a “historic milestone in humanity’s fight against this horrific disease.” GAVI said “a coordinating mechanism” to decide how and when vaccines will be used will be established with partner organizations. There are similar stockpiles for vaccines against yellow fever, meningitis and cholera. Those limited shots are doled out to developing countries by WHO, UNICEF, the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders after receiving technical advice from others. The Ebola vaccine stockpile will be available to all countries, but only developing countries will be able to get vaccines for free in addition to support for the logistical costs of mounting vaccination campaigns. Jason Nickerson, a humanitarian affairs adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said the new stockpile would change how officials respond to future Ebola outbreaks. “Knowing how many doses of the vaccine exist in the world, and then being able to get a supply of them to high-risk countries in a very quick way, gives us another tool to respond to these outbreaks,” he said. Earlier this year, the medical charity publicly called for an independent committee to oversee Ebola vaccination efforts in Congo, saying WHO sometimes used arbitrary criteria to determine who would get immunized. It said the fact that Ebola was continuing to spread despite the large number of people vaccinated was a damning assessment of the response. Containing this outbreak has been complicated by violence and misunderstandings in a part of Congo that had never reported an Ebola case before. Last week, response activities were suspended after attacks killed four Ebola responders, including a member of a vaccination team. Multiple rebel groups operate in eastern Congo and the region has been described as a war zone. WHO has warned continued attacks on health workers and Ebola clinics could undermine attempts to curb Ebola and prompt a resurgence of the disease. Claim: Vaccine group announces creation of Ebola vaccine stockpile.

SOLUTION: The vaccine alliance GAVI announced Thursday it would invest $178 million to create a global stockpile of about 500,000 Ebola vaccines, a decision that health officials say could help prevent future outbreaks from spiraling out of control.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: A total of 17,127 people have died from the virus in Italy, the most anywhere in the world, with Lombardy accounting for 55% of the tally. The region also accounts for 39% of the country’s 135,586 confirmed cases. The particularly large death toll in Lombardy, the wealthiest region in Italy, has raised eyebrows, with local officials suggesting that both the high urban density and considerable elderly population might have played a part. However, a damning letter by senior doctors, including the heads of 11 provincial health authorities within Lombardy, said failures in the region’s health system had exacerbated the greatest emergency Italy has faced since World War Two. Amongst the failings they highlighted was a lack of protective clothing for medical staff - a regular source of anger since the outbreak emerged on Feb. 21. “This determined the death of many colleagues, the illness of many of them and the probable and involuntary spread of the contagion, especially in the early stages of the epidemic,” said the letter, which was posted on the website of the national federation of doctors, surgeons and orthodontists. The federation says 94 medics have died in the outbreak, many in Lombardy, which is run by the far-right League party. There was no immediate comment from Lombardy officials. The medics bemoaned an “absence of strategies” in tackling the crisis, a lack of good data and limited testing as the virus spread. This “greatly underestimated the number of patients and, to a lesser extent, the number of dead”, they wrote. While the neighbouring region of Veneto engaged in widespread testing in a known coronavirus hotspot, Lombardy only tested the seriously ill arriving for treatment in hospital, saying they did not have the capacity for wider checks. The letter took aim at the management of nursing homes, where hundreds of people have died without ever being tested. The doctors said in the province of Bergamo alone, 600 of the 6,000 pensioners under care had died. Italy’s health ministry announced on Tuesday it was sending inspectors to Milan’s largest nursing home, Pio Albergo Trivulzio, where more than 100 people have died since March. A photograph of nine bodies in the home’s mortuary was published on the front page of La Repubblica newspaper on Tuesday, with another showing its chapel full of coffins. Lombardy’s top health official, Giulio Gallera, rejected media allegations that the region had allowed hospitals to send infected patients to local care homes without proper protection in an effort to free up badly needed space in packed wards. “We always acted for the good of everyone in an extraordinary emergency and we will not let anyone cast aspersions on the serious, rigorous work we have carried out,” he said on Facebook. He did not refer to the doctors’ letter. Italy’s healthcare system is decentralized with regions having control over the money that goes to hospitals within their own borders. Lombardy has focused on developing a dual private-public network of high-performing hospitals, but critics say this was done at the expense of grassroots medical care. “Public health and on-the-ground medicine have been neglected and weakened in our region for many years,” the doctors said. “It is going to be difficult to recover from this situation at the moment,” they wrote, adding that as a starting point, the region should undertake large scale testing of health workers. Claim: Italian doctors slam failings in Lombardy coronavirus response.

SOLUTION:
Doctors in Lombardy, the Italian region hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic, have criticised local officials for their handling of the crisis and said the mistakes they made should be a lesson for everyone.