Finland Latest Country to Receive Faulty Chinese Protective Equipment

BEIJING, CHINA - JANUARY 26: Chinese police officers wearing masks stand in front of the T
Betsy Joles/Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

The CEO of the Finnish Centre for Security of Supply has announced that the first order of respirators and medical equipment delivered from China does not pass European standards.

CEO Tomi Lounema stated that the medical equipment, which Finland received earlier this week, did not pass tests that would allow for it to be used in the country’s hospitals. The Ministry of Social Affairs stated the equipment could be used in other situations.

Protective medical supplies are beginning to run low in parts of Finland. According to Lounema, more supplies are headed from China in the next week, broadcaster YLE reports.

Lounema also noted that the supplier of the new equipment was not the same as the supplier of the faulty goods, but could not guarantee the new shipment would be able to pass the tests.

“Currently, the protection market is very chaotic compared to the normal situation when you know who you are dealing with and the products are internationally known brands. Right now, there is a very wide range of traders in the market,” Lounema said.

The Finnish case comes after several other countries have reported faulty medical equipment shipped to them from China, including in the Netherlands where authorities recalled 600,000 masks with defective filters.

Earlier this week, the Canadian city of Toronto recalled $200,000 worth of masks manufactured in China, 62,600 masks in total, due to “poor quality”.

Masks have not been the only faulty medical equipment shipped across the globe from China in recent weeks. Spain reported that the first batch of 9,000 coronavirus testing kits only worked 30 per cent of the time.

British authorities have complained of the same issue with testing kits they had ordered, with Public Health England’s Professor John Newton stating that millions of ordered test kits were “not good enough to be worth rolling out in very large scale”.

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