Coronavirus: Spanish healthcare workers reel from faulty masks

More than 1000 healthcare workers are in isolation and thousands more face testing thanks to faulty face masks from China.

Workers in Madrid are seen outside a pharmacy to support caregivers with a banner with the words "Together we will get though it" as the lockdown continues due to the coronavirus outbreak. Picture: Carlos Alvarez/Getty

More than 1000 healthcare workers have been isolated and ­thousands more will have to be tested after using faulty face masks from China.

The batch of up to 400,000 ­defective masks was withdrawn last week after being used for 10 days, according to the newspaper El Pais. The government does not know how many of the masks are faulty or how many health workers have used them.

Spain’s regional governments are trying to identify staff who may have been exposed to COVID-19 by using them.

Reports said nurses in some ­regions had been told to ­return unused masks but continued to wear others from the suspect batch because they were the only ones available.

The masks, which were bought from Chinese firm Garry Galaxy, were intended to alleviate a shortage of protective gear for health workers. They were also distributed to homecare workers.

More than 31,000 healthcare workers in Spain — more than 15 per cent of its number of known cases — have contracted the virus, with dozens of official deaths, including 34 doctors. As much as a third of the country’s nursing staff — 70,000 people — may have been infected, according to a ­recent survey by a nurses’ union.

The vulnerability of the country’s healthcare workers to infection has stymied efforts to combat the epidemic, which has claimed 21,282 lives. The number of known infections has risen to 204,178.

The purchase of faulty masks, however, follows another blunder when the government bought 650,000 unreliable diagnostic tests from a Chinese company. That purchase has ­delayed plans for the mass testing of health workers and the elderly in care homes.

THE TIMES