10,000 masks ordered from local business, will not be used in patient care

THUNDER BAY – Staff at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre will begin wearing cloth masks in an effort to prevent potential spread of COVID-19. The masks will not be used in patient care, the hospital says.

“Cloth masks are to be worn by staff when performing non patient care activities or when leaving their units and physical distancing of 2 meters cannot be maintained,” according to a spokesperson for the hospital.

The move follows recommendations by Canada’s chief public health officer, the hospital added, intended to reduce the risk of transmission by pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.

An order for 10,000 masks has been placed with local company The Whole Nine Yards, the first of which were delivered this week. The masks consist of two layers of 100% cotton, with a polypropylene filter in between.

Dr. Stewart Kennedy, the hospital’s COVID-19 incident manager, emphasized that staff will still don medical-grade PPE when dealing with patients.

“In patient care, that will be removed, and they’ll have a surgical mask and PPE applied as appropriate to infectious disease protocol,” he said.

Valarie Midgley, designer and owner at The Whole Nine Yards, said her business has been hard-pressed to keep up with demands for masks, both from health institutions and individual customers.

In her case, that’s due more to high demand and a difficulty finding skilled labour than shortages of sewing materials.

“I saw early on what this was going to look like, and ordered my supplies,” Midgley related. “I happened to catch it just at the right time and got some of the last of the supplies in Canada.”

Sought-after material like small sewing elastic is now nearly impossible to come by nationally, Midgley said, but her own supplies are holding up, for now. At the moment, she’s more concerned with finding skilled workers to meet rising demand.

“We don’t have a large labour pool that specializes in the garment industry,” she explained. “It’s been a dying trade that went overseas 30 years ago. When you have a whole industry that has not been nurtured for 30 years, it’s difficult to get the qualified people who know what they’re doing.”