Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that over 11 million face masks have arrived in Canada in recent days.
That includes a shipment of one million masks that arrived at a Hamilton warehouse overnight.
He said workers are trying to quickly assess that they meet the needed standards and that 10 million masks are already being distributed to provinces and territories.
The prime minister also said the government has ordered hundreds of thousands of face shields from Bauer, which normally makes hockey equipment.
Photo credit: File
He added that he will host a first ministers meeting tonight to discuss Canada’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The premiers were to meet in person on March 13 but that meeting was cancelled when Trudeau was forced into isolation because his wife tested positive for COVID-19.
Trudeau said the meeting, which will be held remotely, will include discussions about the continued need to share data and modelling between jurisdictions.
The prime minister was also asked by journalists if he was in good health after he coughed a number of times during his morning press conference.
He said that he was perfectly healthy and perhaps ought to start wearing a scarf to protect him from the chilly Ottawa air.
Trudeau also said he will soon be able to give Canadians a better sense of the impact COVID-19 is going to have on this country but he isn’t able to do it yet.
As countries like New Zealand and the United States project the numbers of people in their countries who might die from COVID-19, Canada has thus far refused to release any of the modelling done with the data here.
The prime minister said he knows Canadians want to be able to plan and see what is working and what is not and promises that information will be ready soon.
