According to the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, the Bank of China has donated medical supplies to Canada to help them fight the coronavirus COVID-19 infection.
The donation of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), included 50,000 pairs of gloves, 30,000 medical masks, 10,000 sets of protective clothing and 10,000 goggles to Canada this past Friday.
China was perhaps returning the favor, in February the Canadian government sent supplies to China to help them deal with the outbreak when they were getting overwhelmed with the outbreak.
On March 27, Bank of China donates medical supplies (including 30000 medical masks, 10000 sets of protective clothing, 10000 goggles and 50000 pairs of gloves, followed by N95 medical masks) to Canada fighting against COVID-19. We are together! pic.twitter.com/47VlWPlQyG
— 中国驻加拿大大使馆 Chinese Embassy in Canada (@ChinaEmbOttawa) March 28, 2020
CTV News reported that the Canadian government has been under some scrutiny lately for sending supplies to China. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended the government’s response to the global pandemic caused by the coronavirus, “I can assure everyone that the federal stockpiles have been sufficient to meet the needs of the provinces until this point.”
Now, China is returning the favor by sending supplies to countries that are more in need. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne sent out a tweet thanking China for their help:
In the face of a global pandemic, supporting each other is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.
In his statement, Trudeau went on to say that Canada will receive “millions more items” to deal with this health emergency, and many Canadian businesses have retooled their productions and are now manufacturing health care equipment.
There have been concerns regarding reports from the Dutch government, and Spain regarding the quality of the products they received from China. These included 600,000 defective masks to the Netherlands and faulty COVID-19 tests to Spain.
Trudeau addressed these concerns from his home on Sunday:
We will be receiving equipment — masks and gloves and gowns — from China extremely shortly in the coming days. I can assure people that Health Canada has very strong procedures for evaluating (and) ensuring what we get is up to the necessary standards and there will be no corners cut on this one. We need to make sure that the equipment that our health-care workers rely on to keep them safe as they keep us safe is of a quality that is going to actually do the job.
China plans to send further supplies to Canada as well, the Chinese Embassy has plans to send another shipment that will contain N95 masks. The embassy wrote, “We are together!”
Since China has gotten the virus under control in their country they have been sending out supplies to many different nations to help deal with the virus that began in Wuhan.
Last week China began sending out supplies to the African Union and plan to send out many more test kits and protective suits. Chinese billionaire Jack Ma the co-founder of Alibaba promised to also help out and ship supplies to each of the 54 African states.
China has also reached out to Pakistan and sent PPE equipment to the Pakistani government. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, China sent a plane with ventilators, masks, and other medical equipment to help deal with the coronavirus crisis.
