- At the start of the week, the Initiatives company handed over a large stock of protective masks to the Pays-de-la-Loire regional health agency.
- These were obsolete equipment, but tests were carried out to authorize their use.
Like what, it sometimes makes sense to keep some things, even if you do not immediately see the usefulness. At the start of the week, and as the coronavirus epidemic is gaining ground in France, a business manager from Le Mans has figured out how to get rid of bulky boxes, stored for ten years. Inside were no less than 300,000 protective masks that Franck Vallée, managing director of Initiatives, decided to offer free of charge to the Pays de la Loire regional health agency.
"We had them since 2009 and the H1N1 epidemic," says the business manager. At the time, we sold them to our customers, town halls and schools, but we still had a large stock after the epidemic was brought under control. The masks were since stored in good conditions, we did not want to destroy them because the products are nickels! So we spontaneously proposed to give 97% of the stock, or about 297,000 masks. "
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A “civic gesture”
Good news for the ARS Pays de la Loire, when these masks, reserved for healthcare professionals, are in short supply. However, we had to make sure that the equipment, which in theory had expired in 2014, was still usable. "Tests were carried out to find that there was no danger," says Thierry Le Guen, Head of Health Monitoring and exceptional health situations. At worst, they are a little less effective, but it's always better than not having them at all. A "civic gesture" welcomed by the ARS, which also received some 2,000 FFP2 type masks, found in the drawers of the regional directorate for Food, Agriculture and Forestry (Draaf).
According to the ARS, the masks recovered at Le Mans will be given priority to "contact cases", those people who are the subject of a confinement measure at home, around 400 currently in the Pays-de-Loire. In parallel, 32,000 masks are being delivered to each of the region's seven hospitals. Tuesday, in the Pays-de-la-Loire, 28 cases of Covid-19 had been identified, including four patients cured. Two people, hospitalized in Nantes and Angers, were however "in a worrying situation".
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