As virus explodes, world races to mask up

By Michael Shields, Carl O’Donnell, Roxanne Liu and Anthony Deutsch ZURICH, March 25 (Reuters) – Spiez Lab, a government-run institute in the Swiss mountains, was set up to protect the nation from nuclear, biological and chemical threats. “For a world without weapons of mass destruction,” runs its slogan. It is now fighting another global menace – the coronavirus – by providing face masks, the demand for which is growing faster than the disease they’re meant to fend off.

Hospitals treating COVID-19, the pandemic caused by the virus, can need up to nine times the protective equipment they do when dealing with normal flu, according to the American Hospital Association. The Swiss lab acquires masks that are past their expiry dates, then tests them to see if they still work. “If yes, they’re being distributed to the health care system via military pharmacies,” said spokesman Andreas Bucher. So far, he said, Spiez Lab has distributed 10.2 million masks.

That’s a lot for an institute better known for its expertise on deadly nerve agents. But globally, it’s a drop in an ocean of need. In Switzerland, whose population of 8.2 million is about the size of New York City, it would amount to less than 10 days’ supply, based on estimates by the Swiss government. Across the world, frontline medical staff are clamouring for face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE). Even as China, the world’s main supplier, comes back onstream, companies around the globe are battling a host of obstacles, from illness to freight costs, from hoarding how to make a mask a supply squeeze on filter fabric.

In the United States, the new epicentre of the pandemic, shortages are so acute that health workers have taken to social media to appeal for help under the hashtag #GetMePPE. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said that over the next 18 months it aims to buy 500 million masks for the Strategic National Stockpile, the nation’s supply of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is distributing masks, but it’s “not easy” for the federal government to help states obtain the equipment, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday.

Frontline medical staff in many countries say shortages of masks and other equipment have left them vulnerable to catching the virus – which forces them into isolation and reduces staff numbers. Madrid’s doctors’ union has filed a lawsuit to try to force the regional health authority to deliver scrubs, masks and goggles to hospitals and other health centres. A spokesman for the authority declined to comment. Medical staff in the Netherlands blame the lack of masks for the high rates of coronavirus infection among them – the health ministry disputes that but acknowledges the shortage.