China on Friday tightened export restrictions on masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE), requiring shipments of the items to undergo mandatory customs inspections with immediate effect. Under normal circumstances, about twenty million masks are produced in China every day. That’s estimated to be about half of all the masks made in the world.
However, Chinese production has been reduced to about 10 million masks due to both the New Year holiday and the effects of the virus itself. Of course, this is not enough to meet even the current demand in China. Also, it’s the higher-end masks that are the most effective and the most used. One type, called an N95 respirator, filters at least 95% of airborne particles and is more effective than an ordinary surgical or medical mask, which also needs to be changed more frequently.
According to the Ministry of Industry, China currently produces around 600,000 of these high-quality masks every day. One province, Zhejiang, reported on January 27 that it needed one million of these masks a day, and other provinces said they were just barely able to meet the demand for these high-quality masks. In addition, hospitals do not have large stocks of these masks – in most cases they only last for two weeks.
There were reports of shortages and rising prices across China as people rushed to buy masks. To give an idea of the demand, Chinese online shopping website Taobao said it sold more than 80 million masks in just two days in January.Foxconn, the maker of the Apple iPhone, has announced it will switch part of its production to making surgical masks. The goal is to produce two million masks per day by the end of February. As we all know, FFP2 mask manufacturers from China will be the major players in this market from March to May 2020.