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Following orders by the Quebec Health Ministry, hospitals across Montreal have quietly pulled N-95 respirator masks that used to be easily available in emergency rooms and other departments, the Montreal Gazette has learned.

Medical staff have been advised to ration the distribution of such masks to patients as Quebec braces for outbreaks of COVID-19. The Health Ministry is concerned supplies of medical-protection gear might run out in the midst of what the World Health Organization is now declaring a pandemic, the highest public-health alert.

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Meanwhile, a group of fewer than 10 nurses and other health professionals at Notre-Dame Hospital are home in voluntary isolation after being exposed on Monday to a patient who has COVID-19. The patient showed up at the ER and tested negative for the seasonal flu, said Jean-Nicholas Aubé, a spokesperson for Montreal’s centre-south health authority.