The World Needs Masks. China Makes Them — But Has Been Hoarding Them.

Citing shortages that endanger doctors and nurses, the French government last week requisitioned all mask production through the end of May. It is also pressing French medical supply factories to produce N95 masks and surgical masks around the clock for domestic use only.

Valmy SAS, a midsize medical supplies maker near Lyon, France, was unable to fulfill an order for a million masks by the British National Health Service because the French government requisitioned supplies. “They tell me what to make and I make it,” said Nicolas Brillat, the company’s director.

Germany and the Czech Republic last week banned the export of face masks and other protective equipment. In Italy, where the government has placed nearly all of the population on lockdown since Monday, masks and other protective medical supplies may not leave the country without authorization.

The governments did not give production numbers or say how many masks they needed to cover at-risk populations. But officials in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and other European Union countries warned that the curbs were preventing suppliers from delivering to neighboring countries.

The bans “risk undermining our collective approach to handle this crisis,” Janez Lenarcic, the E.U.’s crisis management commissioner, said on Friday at an emergency meeting of European health ministers in Brussels.

Supplies from a five-story building in southwestern Shanghai could help alleviate the shortage. The huge factory is one of the most important sites manufacturing N95 respirators for 3M.

Standing at the factory fence, which was topped with six strands of electrified wire, a worker who gave only his family name, Zhou, said the masks had been helping China fight the virus.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/business/masks-china-coronavirus.html