The federal and Ontario governments have convinced manufacturing giant 3M to produce N95 respirator masks at its plant in Brockville. This move will provide Canada a domestic supply of critical personal protective equipment.
The two levels of government and the company will evenly split a financial investment of at least $70-million to boost production capacity at the existing 3M facility in Brockville, with a goal of producing face masks by 2021. Both levels of government have also agreed to long-term agreements to buy face masks from the company.
During the early days of the pandemic, Ottawa made it a priority to boost the domestic PPE supply chain. It had success on products such as surgical masks, medical gowns, and gloves. But Canada has been forced to depend heavily on factories in China and the U.S. for the more specialized N95 respirators – and there have been issues with both.
Millions of the Chinese-made masks failed to meet the Canadian quality standards and cannot be used by the front-line healthcare workers.
Since January, 3M has boosted its global production of N95 masks and hopes to ramp up to 2-billion N95 masks a year by the end of 2020.
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https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-face-mask
https://www.livescience.com/are-face-masks-effective-reducing-coronavirus-spread.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/cloth-face-coverings-information.pdf