Monitoring Desk
ANGERS: For one face mask factory outside Angers, western France, business is booming. It already makes about 100 million masks per year, but soaring demand due to the coronavirus outbreak means it is adding a third more staff and ramping up production to seven days a week.
The plant, owned by Canadian medical supplies group Medicom, is struggling to meet a flood of orders from pharmacies and hospitals in Europe and parts of Asia, primarily China – where the virus has killed more than 500 – Hong Kong and Singapore. “Since the virus outbreak in China, demand has been multiplied by five and we are trying to respond to that as soon as we can,” Medicom’s Chief Operating Officer Guillaume Laverdure told Reuters at the plant.
“We cannot answer all that (new) demand overnight, it will take a while to ramp up manufacturing.” One of four Medicom factories producing the masks, it says it will hire 30 new staff on top of the 100 it already has and switch to a seven-day week by the end of February. Honeywell, Moldex and 3M also manufacture face masks. Though the World Health Organization only recommends their use by people who have virus symptoms and says they do not guarantee protection against infections, masks are also flying off pharmacy shelves.
In Paris, both Asian tourists and worried locals are stocking up. Pharmacist Pascal Legrand, who sells Medicom masks, said the situation was “extremely tense”. He was looking for other manufacturers as supply was getting tighter and prices on some products had increased five- to ten-fold. (Reuters)
