The French government indicated this Wednesday that it will ask companies to purchase and supply enough masks for 10 weeks for their employees, in the event of a second wave of the covid-19 pandemic.
“We are preparing the beginning of the school year and there is a risk of re-circulation of the virus (…), we will ask companies to plan in order to supply masks for their employees for a period of 10 weeks, with a ‘ reminder that there are now French mask producers, “Agnès Pannier-Runacher, secretary of state for the economy, said today during a Senate hearing.
The minister, reports AFP, said that she has already signed an order for this purpose, which still needs to be signed by the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud, and by the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran.
The announcement came after a question about French companies that converted their production lines to provide masks during the “peak” of the pandemic and that now find it difficult to drain their stocks.
Pannier-Runacher stressed that “if companies had not started to produce masks, many of them would have filed for insolvency because they had no orders”. “This production saved thousands of jobs and hundreds of companies”, he reinforced.
The Secretary of State warned that some companies took a risk by continuing to produce masks in large quantities without having orders. Without identifying the company, Pannier-Runacher alluded to a company with a stock of 20 million disposable masks that were produced “without any guaranteed order”.
However, Agnès Pannier-Runacher also appealed to the “responsibility” of the communities and local authorities, pointing out that “some canceled the orders they had placed”, putting the producers of this protective equipment in serious difficulties.
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