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- Health: The Government urgently withdraws a batch of hundreds of thousands of 'fake' masks that it distributed to the autonomous regions
New cases of defective face masks imported from China. This time, bought by two autonomies. The Andalusian Government and the Community of Madrid have to withdraw batches of material not suitable for the use of health professionals, after two reports from the Ministry of Labor, to which THE WORLD has agreed, have certified that the masks "do not meet "the minimum requirements. They have not yet been quantified, but in the hospitals they assure that they are "at least" tens of thousands.
As this newspaper has learned, the masks have continued to be used until this Tuesday -at least- in the Community of Madrid. The Madrid Agency for Social Care ( AMAS ) has sent an email to nursing homes asking for the removal of the masks, which were supplied through Ifema.
But in the hospitals they assure that they have not yet received communication from the Madrid Ministry of Health. The verifications carried out on the masks were carried out on April 23, according to the government report.
It is therefore of the same process happened with masks fake of Garry Galaxy that distributed health and had to be withdrawn. In this case, these are protections from the Chinese brand Purvigor . In both Andalusia and Madrid, the masks do not meet the requirements to be considered FFP2 , professional quality and suitable for use by hospital personnel dealing with coronavirus patients. Much less, FFP3 , as they were sold.
Filtering level of 30%, not 6%
In the case of the Community of Madrid, it was the Hospital 12 de Octubre that gave the alarm and therefore asked the National Institute of Safety and Health, under the Ministry of Labor , to carry out tests "to verify if they offer certain protection against particle penetration "from two batches of FFP3 masks.
In this case, "it is a Purvigor N99 mask , self-filtering against particles, folded, with a nose clip, with a headgear consisting of elastic bands that pass behind the ears," reads the report.
"The packaging consists of a plastic bag with a mask unit." Well, these masks, which have to have a maximum filtering level of 6%, reached over 30%. A little more, still, than those of Garry Galaxy.
Health sources assure that they were distributed by several Madrid hospitals, in addition to October 12: Severo Ochoa , Puerta de Hierro , Virgen de la Poveda , Hospital del Henares (Coslada), Severo Ochoa de Leganés , Getafe , as well as in primary care centers and nursing homes. At the Puerta de Hierro and La Poveda, until "last night" itself, "at least".
"In Móstoles they have been used for a whole week at least in the UVI," they add. And in La Princesa they have not been used: "In the Central Warehouse of the Hospital there is a batch of 1,000 of these masks, although none of them has been distributed to any professional," they assure.
In the case of Andalusia, sources from the Board assure that "the masks, which we bought them, have been tested as they arrived", given the impossibility of doing so in advance. The Andalusian Health Service ( SAS ), "seeing that they were suspicious, sent them to the ministry's laboratory," they add.
Models removed in Andalusia
In effect, the report of the Ministry of Labor details that it was the Board that demanded to test two models of these masks: Elite Respirator EB09.049 (two of the three samples do not "comply") and model KN95 Mask . In Andalusia, the SAS has ordered the withdrawal of two other models for not guaranteeing their effectiveness. The latter of the two has also been used in hospitals and residential centers in Madrid.
In Andalusia, these masks have been used in practically all the health centers of Cádiz, in addition to the Puerta del Mar hospitals in the capital of Cádiz and in those of Jerez and Puerto Real . In the Reina Sofía Hospital of Córdoba, Regional Hospital and in the ICU of the Clinical Hospital of Malaga, the Virgen de las Nieves University of Granada, these masks have also arrived at the ICU and have already been removed.
In Madrid, AMAS has warned residential workers that "under no circumstances should" Purvigor masks be available to workers at this time, so they must activate all means at their disposal to guarantee effectiveness of this measure. " "In the event that they have a container of the same, it must be returned immediately to the agency," he said.
Restrooms demand removal of units
Professionals now demand the location and immediate removal of these masks, "once the Ministry of Labor has shown that they are not effective as a means of protection against Covid-19." This is what sources from CSIF , the most representative union of Public Administrations, assure this newspaper .
It also requests "that all personnel who have used them be quarantined and that the appropriate tests be carried out to determine whether the use of this defective material has infected them with coronaviruses."
From the union criticize "the improvisation and ineffectiveness of the Ministry of Health and the corresponding regional councils, which again remove protective material for not complying with quality standards."
"We wonder why they do not carry out these tests on the products they buy from foreign suppliers before supplying it to the workers, since checking their effectiveness afterwards can have fatal results," they say.
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