“If China or any other country has some masks, gloves or other products we need for the American people, we welcome that with open arms,” he said. “What we don’t need is some kind of propaganda exercise during a crisis that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party have made far more serious than it otherwise would have been.”
American officials have estimated that the country would need 3.5 billion masks to cope with a yearlong pandemic. Local health officials in the United States say nurses, doctors and other responders face hazards to their own health as infections mount.
China has what they need. Beijing undertook an enormous national mobilization to respond to its outbreak and now produces 116 million masks a day, or about 12 times what it made before. Most are disposable surgical masks, not the N95 respirators that health care professionals need. But a second wave of production of N95 respirators is starting to come onto the market, respirator and mask traders said.
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