WABUSH, N.L. — A Labrador mining company sent 20,000 masks to help with the shortage the province is facing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
Tacora Resources sent the N95 masks to Eastern Health on March 30 and said they were glad to help.
Graham Letto, government and media relations with the company, told SaltWire there was an ask from the provincial COVID-19 task force for any extra PPE companies may have for frontline health-care workers and, after making sure they had enough for their own workforce, they sent the extra 20,000 along.
“We had all these masks, and we said ‘sure, we’ll contribute to this’ and sent them to the health authorities,” Letto said. “We felt this was a way we could contribute. We’re all in this together. So we made the offer, and they accepted. We dropped them off at the airport in Wabush and PAL flew them out free of charge.”
Letto said they were glad to assist in any way they could to help address the shortage.
PPE shortage continuing
Health Minister John Haggie addressed the shortage of PPE in the daily media briefing Wednesday.
He said there are several initiatives underway to address the issue and said the problem isn’t unique to Newfoundland and Labrador.
“Quite frankly, there is a whole saga behind the scenes of inventory that doesn’t exist, of orders that disappear, and deliveries being purchased from underneath us by other jurisdictions outside Canada,” he said.
When asked if the province was looking at using more local resources, Haggie said there is a national and provincial program underway to do that.
“Locally here we have a very active group and that group is working at repurposing manufacturing potential to look at gowns particularly, 3D printing for face shields, also the possibility of gloves and masks.”
He said the provincial government is "cautiously optimistic" it will have those measures in place soon and the supply of PPE will continue.
