We had been talking about the global shortage of surgical masks, as well as a shortage of materials to make surgical mask.
What our country has done is to priorities masks and other personal protection equipment (PPE) for medical workforce.
This is very important as our healthcare workers are at most risks, because they face lots of patients everyday.
On masks:
China produces half the world's output of surgical masks. After the Wuhan outbreak and lockdown Chinese factories are not up to speed yet. Making things more complicated, Jia county is under lockdown since 1st April 2020 after flare-up in coronavirus cases. Some may not be aware that beside Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and India. China also have strict control on the export of surgical masks, hand sanititisers and/or mask filiter materials now.
In Singapore, while we have stockpile, these are not likely to be enough if COVID -19 continues to spread to thousands more and over extended period of time.
My ex-boss from Bio-Labone Scientific Group Pte Ltd, Mr Raymond Ng who is a Singaporean. Called me from China yesterday after he saw on news that Singapore COVID-19 case had reach the 1000 mark. He requested for me to rejoin his company quickly as the General Manager and step up together with him to build a SMART Automatic mask production facility in Singapore. His exact words are "Lets step up as Singaporean to produce masks for Singaporean" this reminds me of What is Total Defense? Total Defence involves every Singaporean playing a part, individually and collectively, to build a strong, secure and cohesive nation. When we are strong, we are able to deal with any crisis.
Total Defense has seen us through SARS, the fall-out from the 9/11 attacks and the economic crises of 1997 and 2008, and the haze. I am sure we will seen through COVID-19 when we play our part in Total Defence.
I am already running my renovation company but i decided to take up his challenge. I do it because i know i can provide more values to fellow Singaporean by following this cause. We are in a war with a faceless enemy, our mission is to equip all Singaporean with a surgical mask produced in Singapore by mid June 2020, so as to stop the spread of COVID-19 due to shortage of mask.
We already have the plan worked out and leveraging on Mr Raymond Ng's expertises on building SMART automatic mask manufacturing facilities in China. One production line will be able to deliver 13 million certified masks per year. We will scale up the production line according to situation of COVID-19.
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