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Photo by George Frey/Reuters

Ontario Nurses’ Association president Vicki McKenna said in an email, “We believe that there is a supply problem but government officials will not confirm supply. … This question is asked at every meeting with ministry officials.”

The spread of the coronavirus has triggered a global shortage of N95 respirator masks. The United States, for example, has said it has about 12 million, but needs roughly 300 million.

Canadian officials have said they are prepared to deal with the novel coronavirus because of lessons learned from the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak involving another coronavirus. SARS killed 44 people in the Toronto area in 2002 and 2003 after a series of hospital and public health failures.

No budget to manage stockpile

As of 2017, the preparatory stockpile amassed by Ontario included 26,000 pallets of supplies: respirators, face shields, needles and more. But no one had ensured that the supplies would be given to hospitals before their expiration and then replaced with fresh ones in the stockpile, according to the auditor general report.

“The ministry informed us that its budget for these supplies only allowed for storage and not the management of them,” the report stated. Storage costs were running at more than $3 million a year, and the ministry had started to dispose of the supplies, the report stated.

If some expired respirators are still in storage, they may still be usable. In 2017, the CDC tested stockpiled masks and found many models continued to perform effectively years after their expiration.