ARCHIVED - Panic buying and hoarding force Murcia health service to buy 200,000 extra facemasks

Members of the public fail to heed the advice of the WHO and other heath authorities

Despite repeated pleas made by the health authorities all over Spain for people not to fall into the temptation of stocking up on facemasks as the Covid-19 virus spreads across the country, the regional government of Murcia has found itself obliged to order an extra 200,000 of them in order to guarantee that there are enough in hospitals and for people who genuinely need to wear them.

The World Health Organization, and health authorities all over the planet, insist that the best precaution to take is to wash your hands thoroughly and frequently, using disinfectant gel if available. Wearing facemasks is not considered especially effective, although of course it certainly won’t increase the risk (unless the mask has already been worn by an infected individual!), but in general it is not recommended except for people who are coughing or sneezing: in these cases, where they may be infected, they will help to prevent the virus from spreading to others.

In addition, of course, those who wear masks due to already existing medical conditions should continue to do so.

And yet the general public as a whole appears to be unconvinced by the opinions of the world’s most respected doctors, and in Murcia as elsewhere pharmacies are selling out of the masks as soon as they arrive and hospitals are reporting that they are being removed from wards. It has become necessary for them to be made inaccessible for visitors to hospitals unless distributed by medical staff, and in order to ensure that there are no shortfalls in the hospitals themselves an extra order of 200,000 masks has been placed by the government for next week.

At present the Murcia Health Service (SMS) has 150,000 masks in stock, which in normal circumstances would be enough to last health centres and hospitals for a month, plus another 5,000 “up-market” masks for special cases. However, time and again it appears to be necessary to remind the public, as the regional government did again on Monday that the masks “should be used rationally”: that is to say, not by the public in general, but only by those who suffer chronic or immune-depressant conditions.

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