07:53

Foxconn, the electronics company that supplies Apple, has begun manufacturing its own surgical masks, allowing Chinese workers to churn out iPhones uninterrupted as the coronavirus crisis continues.

The Taiwanese company’s production lines have been shut down because of the disruption caused by the outbreak, slowing down the supply chain that feeds Apple’s global retail network.

However, in a statement released via the Chinese social media platform WeChat, Foxconn said it hoped to get around the problem by switching some of its own production lines to make masks, for its own staff and to supply the soaring global demand for them.

It hopes to ramp up production to 2m masks by the end of the month. “In this war against the epidemic, every second counts,” the company said.

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