Coronavirus: Chinese embassy in Canada to investigate claims 1 million N95 masks were substandard
- China ‘has always placed emphasis on the quality of its exports’, mission says, as it ask for matter not to be politicised
- Canada’s Public Health Agency earlier rejected the masks, saying they were not fit for use by frontline workers
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After reading about the incident in the media, the embassy said in a notice on its website on Saturday that it had contacted Canada’s Public Health Agency and its minister for foreign affairs to confirm the reports.
“China has always placed emphasis on the quality of its exports, and the government has placed stricter supervision on medical equipment,” it said.
“If specific issues arise during cooperation to fight the virus, we should solve them with a matter-of-fact attitude, instead of giving politicised interpretations.”
China and Canada had been supportive of each other since the coronavirus outbreak began, the notice said.
Canada had bought medical equipment from China through many channels and China had provided assistance and convenience, it said.
It said also that earlier reports claiming China had sent substandard face masks to other countries were an “issue of misuse or mismatch” on the part of the recipients.
The Canadian government said earlier that the masks failed to meet its standards for health care professionals and would not be distributed to provinces or cities.
Three out of four Chinese test kits in Danish study found to have 90 per cent accuracy rate
The KN95 is a Chinese model similar to the N95, which is a crucial type of personal protective equipment used to defend nurses, doctors and other health workers in the fight against Covid-19. In general, Canada has authorised the KN95 for use as part of the Covid-19 response, but individual shipments are inspected.
“The Department of Health says that while KN95 masks are an acceptable alternative to those rated N95, the shipment did not meet the filtering standards to capture 95 per cent of tiny particles,” Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported.
A senior Canadian source told Politico this week that China supplied about 70 per cent of Canada’s imports of personal protective equipment, with the bulk of the rest coming from the United States, Britain and Switzerland.
In early April, Finland said a batch of masks it bought from China were not up to its standards for use in hospitals.
While the Chinese company claimed its test kits had an accuracy rate of 80 per cent, the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology found that they got the result wrong 70 per cent of time.
China has consistently denied the accusations.
