“8 million masks are produced a week, 40 millions of them are used and you know our stock is not infinite”… A sad analysis made by Health Minister Olivier Véran during a Coronavirus press conference this Saturday March 28th, 2020. But the minister wanted to be reassuring…. And for good reason, he announced the gigantic order to meet needs of the various professionals lacking gear. All in all, over a billion facemasks (including 74 million FFP2 type facemasks) have been ordered to China – world leader on this market.
Olivier Véran adds: “we’ve placed orders everywhere and where it was possible in the world, especially in China” he explains. He continues by talking about the setup of a “narrow and intensive” airlift “in order to make the delivery of the masks easier”. An airlift that will include 56 rotations between the two countries and an action Air France has announced to be part of, according to our peers at France Info. Also note that four Russian Antonov aircrafts are available, chartered weekly and carrying over 18 million masks each.
In addition to this order, the minister says that French factories are at full capacity to provide as many facemasks as possible: “factories are working all the time and are now able to produce over 8 million facemasks per week” he explains. But apparently, the production wasn’t enough to meet all demands from professionals, as shown by the many alarm calls from the medical staff and other law enforcement agencies, even though, as Olivier Véran says “we dramatically increased the intensive domestic production of facemasks right away”.
On Tuesday March 31, French President Emmanuel Macron visited a facemask factory, Kolmi-Hopen based in Angers. On an address, the Head of State said he wanted to produce more on domestic soil in order to “lower our dependence” adding that France would have “the capacity to produce by the end of April 15 million facemasks per week”.
And as to when France will get this production, good news: a first flight, with 100 tons of medical material and 5.5 million facemasks, arrives to Roissy this Sunday March 29, 2020 in early evening. An arrival confirmed by the French airline chartering cargos to guarantee the airlift. According to our peers at Le Point, before being sent to France “equipment will be based in Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Shanghai”. Masks dispatched then in the different public health warehouses in France.
