Medical supply shortage addressed

Companies return from holiday to make masks, goggles, protecticve suits

China is working to ramp up production of medical supplies and promote international purchasing to address a supply shortage as part of its broader drive to fight the novel coronavirus outbreak, the country's top industry regulator said on Sunday.

Huang Libin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said 20,000 protective suits are now being produced daily, and he emphasized that the ministry is urging more companies to start production soon and to expand international cooperation by purchcasing more supplies from abroad.

A shortage of medical supplies, including protective suits, N95 masks and goggles, was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, Huang said.

As of Saturday night, he said, domestic medical supply manufacturers had sent 136,000 protective suits, 134,000 N95 masks and 188,000 pairs of goggles to Hubei province.

"About 60 percent of the mask manufacturers have restored production, with more than 10 million masks being made per day, and production of N95 masks for medical protective purposes has reached 600,000 a day," said Cao Xuejun, deputy director of the ministry's consumer products industry department.

Cao said production capacity has been limited because many companies are still on Spring Festival holiday, but he believed the imbalance between supply and demand of medical supplies would ease as more enterprises resume production.

N95 masks are precious resources and should be given to the front-line medical staff that care for patients in intensive care units, MIIT Vice-Minister Wang Jiangping said in an interview with China Central Television on Tuesday.

"Special measures should be taken to allocate and manage these resources in a unified manner," Wang said, while noting that normal surgical masks will adequately protect members of the general public.

"To restore 60 percent of normal production capacity during such a nationwide public holiday is already a big achievement. It is supported by a number of factories going into round-the-clock, three-shift a day, nonstop production mode," said Yu Zhanfu, partner and vice-president of consultancy Roland Berger China.

With more factories returning to fairly normal production status on Monday, the production capacity of medical face masks can get back to normal and even expand to an exceptional level to fill in the gap, Yu added.

Moreover, Yu said, it must be guaranteed that more N95 grade masks are shipped to hospitals because it is the type of mask doctors and nurses need most at this time.

Medical supply manufacturers are going full steam in production. Xiantao Hanke Protective Equipment Co went back to work on Jan 26. It can produce 150,000 masks per day, which will be delivered to Wuhan and other cities.

US-based personal protection equipment producer Honeywell said it has paid close attention to the outbreak, coordinated resources and supplied 20 million masks to the market.

It committed all its available manufacturing capacity to help ensure supply to the front-line workers in the most affected areas.

Zheng Yiran contributed to this story.