Beijing is running out of protective masks

BEIJING: Beijing is running out of the humble surgical mask. Several shops in my neighbourhood, which is some 7 km east of Tiananmen Square at the heart of the city, have been emptied out of it in the past 24 to 36 hours over fears of the novel Coronavirus outbreak and a lockdown.

It is ironic that China is running out of masks, the very country where exactly around 110 years ago, ahead of that year’s Lunar New Year, anti-epidemic masks were used for the first time, according to some accounts.

On social media, especially on Wechat groups – and that’s true for much of China – worried citizens are now furiously ordering packets of masks online. Not always with success. Mask manufacturing factories are working at half or less their capacity because of the ongoing Chinese New Year holidays, and it will take a few days before they are able to crank up production. Worse, it is happening in Wuhan, the ground zero of the novel Coronavirus outbreak. Along with protective suits for medical workers, masks are in short supply in the embattled city.

Here are some numbers on the sale of masks this past week from the Hong Kongbased South China Morning Post: Sellers on Alibaba’s e-commerce platform Taobao sold 80 million masks on January 21 and 22 alone. Alibaba rival Jd.com also reportedly sold 126 million masks.

Over the years, masks have become China’s – actually, much of east Asia’s – symbol of its ongoing fight against pathogens.

Tong Bingxue, historian and author of the History of Photo Studios in China (1859-1956) says one Dr Wu Lien-the, a Malayan-chinese doctor, had urged the then Imperial government in China to shut down railway out of Harbin in northeastern China before the Spring Festival of 1911 and first introduced “antiplague” masks in China”.