State’s cache of old masks leads to false rumors

In the heat of the search for medical face masks, the state Department of Public Health emerged with a useful contribution — boxes and boxes of N95 masks, left in a state warehouse since the days of the swine flu outbreak in 2009.

The total was 144,000, or in the way wholesalers might call it, 12,000 dozen, made by Kimberly-Clark. Trouble is, they were past their stated expiration dates.

Someone questioned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which sent word that the masks were indeed too old to use — too old, that is, to function as fully protective, N95 masks for use by doctors and nurses working directly with coughing and wheezing COVID-19 patients.

The masks were fine for general use such as by first responders, in nursing homes and in less intensive medical situations, Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer and commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services, told Hearst Connecticut Media late Thursday.

Word starting getting around over the last few days, and not necessarily with all the facts straight.

State Rep. Lucy Dathan, D-New Canaan, spoke up Wednesday about the masks on the daily call of New Canaan civic and community leaders.

“Stamford Hospital and Norwalk Hospital are concerned about their stocks of PPE,” Dathan said, referring to personal protective equipment, the masks, gowns and gloves that are suddenly gold across the world.

“Apparently, the stocks that were sent by the federal government, that were received yesterday by some of the hospitals, the equipment was expired. It’s a big concern.”

On Thursday, she told Hearst Connecticut Media she understood about 110,000 surgical and 30,000 of the more protective N95 masks were expired, and received with broken elastic bands. “They were received from the national stockpile,” she said.

Dathan cautioned that her information came from another legislator and she had not verified it. The goods were apparently part of the state’s request for 250,000 masks, Dathan said.

Dathan’s facts were dangerously wrong. The expired masks never went out to hospitals or anyone else under false claims. And they didn’t come from the federal stockpile.