Bell donates 1.5 million masks
‘PRIORITY TARGETS’
Telecom giant BCE Inc. has acquired roughly 1.5 million protective face masks to donate to health care and other front line public workers in their battle against COVID-19 — it is one of largest bulk donations of much-needed personal protective equipment to front line workers by a Canadian corporation since the pandemic hit in mid-March.
The N95 and K95 masks, valued at roughly $7.5 million will be distributed across the country to “priority targets” including “health care providers, first responders and other essential departments and agencies,” according to a statement put out by Bell on Friday.
“We identified weeks ago that N95 masks were some of the most important protective gear. As we were scouring for them through our own supply chains we saw an ability to source more N95 masks than we needed,” Mirko Bibic, chief executive of Bell, told the National Post.
Thousands of Bell employees — primarily technicians, and those working at the company’s various call centres across the country — are compelled to show up to work in person, because the nature of their jobs mean they cannot be done from home. For that reason, Bell has had to leverage its global logistics reach to procure gloves, coveralls and masks in bulk.
“You often don’t think about telecom workers at the front lines, but they are, and our workers have to be equipped properly,” said Bibic.
Bibic added that his company decided to “lock the masks down for Canada” in advance of contacting federal and provincial governments about their individual needs for PPE.
“We scooped them up first because we thought by the time we co-ordinated with governments and everyone got organized they would have been gone,” he said.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Patty Hajdu told reporters that the federal government’s stockpile of PPE was likely not sufficient to prevent provincial health care systems from becoming overwhelmed.
Anita Anand, minister of public service and procurement, said the government had placed an order for 300 million surgical masks and 145 million N95 respirators to prepare hospitals for a potential surge of coronavirus cases and that so far about 17 million surgical masks have been delivered to Canada. An additional two million N95 masks are expected to be delivered to provinces and territories before next week.
Other Canadian companies, such as cannabis producer Canopy Growth Corp., have also contributed to the PPE shortage, donating 25,000 N95 masks and 40,000 surgical masks to Ontario this week.
Earlier this month, Chinese telecom company Huawei reportedly shipped 1 million masks, 30,000 goggles and 50,000 pairs of gloves to Canada, though the company has not officially confirmed the donation.