Two planes chartered by the Canary Islands Government landed on Wednesday with a million and a half masks and nearly 60,000 diagnostic kits for use by the healthcare professionals working in the fight against the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
This was reported today by the president of the regional Executive, Ángel Víctor Torrres, through his account on the social network Twitter, in which he added that this material will be distributed throughout the Islands.
The first shipment purchased directly by the regional Executive arrived on Gran Canaria on Wednesday and includes 1.5 million masks, 8,200 diagnostic kits, 4,000 protective glasses for healthcare personnel and 500,000 nitrile gloves. The president thanked a group of Canarian businessmen for their collaboration, who were involved in facilitating the logistics and connectivity necessary for this important cargo to reach the islands from China.
Torres highlighted the efforts made by the Government of the Canary Islands with the collaboration of the president of the Cabildo Fuerteventura, Blas Acosta, to expedite the arrival of another plane at noon today with 50,000 Covid-19 diagnostic kits , to make a total of 58,200 diagnostic kits currently available. The shipment, which arrived in Fuerteventura, has been distributed by helicopter to other parts of the Archipelago.
President Ángel Víctor Torres added that the Government of the Canary Islands has allocated €16 million of its own funds for the purchase of various materials that will arrive over the coming days.
The 58,200 tests that arrived today, explained the President of the Canary Islands, is part of an action plan to start testing the most vulnerable groups in the spread of the coronavirus. In this way, Torres said “priority will be given to people with symptoms, healthcare personnel, the 8,300 citizens in nursing homes throughout the Canary Islands and centres for functional diversity, as well as other socio-healthcare staff”.
The rest of the materials (masks, gloves, gowns, PPE, etc.) will be used for the protection of healthcare workers as well as other essential groups such as police, firefighters, telephone service personnel and workers who perform cleaning and disinfection tasks on all of the Canary Islands.
These batches of protective materials for healthcare and at-risk personnel, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, joins one that arrived from the Spanish Ministry of Health yesterday, consisting of: 18,000 FFP2 masks, 32,000 surgical masks to be distributed in the Primary Care centres, 17,200 plastic surgical gowns, 100 overalls and 5,000 nitrile gloves. In addition to 28 respirators for patients affected by COVID-19 and 1,750 swabs to collect samples for diagnostic PCR tests which arrived on the islands last weekend, consisting of 7,040 FFP2 masks and 8,000 surgical masks.
Ángel Víctor Torres pointed out that before the weekend the arrival of two other planes, with more material acquired directly by the Canary Islands Health Service, is planned, snd he stressed that the aim is to establish a stable open corridor, to guarantee the arrival of materials and cover all needs as they arrive.
