Trump’s clampdown on export of surgical masks is wrong: B.C. health minister

He said it’s important for Canadians that the response to the virus in the U.S. is also effective, noting that he is “very proud” that a B.C. pulp company is providing materials to make the masks. (File photo: katie chao and ben muessig/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s clampdown on the export of surgical-grade face masks that are critical in the fight against the new coronavirus is wrong, British Columbia’s health minister said Friday.

“It’s wrong for them and wrong for us,” Adrian Dix said, adding that COVID-19 doesn’t know borders.

“Part of the reason we have challenges in British Columbia is because there were challenges in Washington state.”

He said it’s important for Canadians that the response to the virus in the U.S. is also effective, noting that he is “very proud” that a B.C. pulp company is providing materials to make the masks.

“We are genuinely as a whole world in this together. And I think the kind of parochial action such as this … is not consistent with what we need to do as a society,” Dix told a news conference in Victoria.

The company 3M, one of the largest manufacturers of protective medical gear in the U.S., has pushed back against the White House, pointing to the “significant humanitarian implications” of denying health-care workers in other countries protective gear during a global pandemic.

Halting the export of respirators could prompt retaliation, and if that were to occur, the net number of respirators available in the U.S. would decrease, the company said in a statement.

Dix cautioned against retaliation and said Canada should respond by “insisting that we work together.”

B.C. announced 53 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, for a total of 1,174 across the province.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry also urged travellers returning to B.C. to immediately enter self-isolation for 14 days when they get back.

“That’s how we protect our families,” she said.

Henry announced that four more people in B.C. have died after contracting the virus, three of whom were connected to outbreaks at either the Lynn Valley or Harold Park long-term care centres in the Vancouver Coastal Health region.

She said the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has decreased by three to 146, with 64 people in critical care, and 641 people have recovered from the disease.

In Vancouver, Mayor Kennedy Stewart said Friday there are no confirmed outbreaks or clusters of COVID-19 in the city’s Downtown Eastside, where many residents have underlying health conditions and face barriers to following social-isolation protocols.

But he said it’s “simply a matter of time” before COVID-19 spreads in communities across B.C., and the city’s top priority is keeping transmission levels low in the Downtown Eastside for as long as possible.

Two referral-only emergency response centres are now open with room for 160 people, said Stewart, and BC Housing has secured hundreds of hotel rooms in Vancouver for people who are homeless or precariously housed and who need to self-isolate.

Arrangements have also been made for commercial cleaning and meal delivery in more than 20 private single room occupancy buildings, or SROs, for the next two weeks, he said.

But Stewart said these supports are “stop gaps” for the next few weeks and he appealed to senior levels of government, as well as charitable and philanthropic communities for support.

“Cities across the country are facing unprecedented financial pressures, some already talking about insolvency only three weeks into this crisis. So, we absolutely need the province and the federal government to step up and help us with operations.”

— With files from James McCarten in Washington, D.C.