First Ontario-produced masks ready for use, Premier Doug Ford says

 

Premier Doug Ford says the first made-in-Ontario face masks are ready for use.

The announcement comes one day after the premier warned that Ontario would run out of personal protective equipment in one week.

Ford was at Woodbridge's manufacturing facility in Vaughan, Ont., today where the first 1,000 Level 3 masks have been produced.

The company hopes to eventually produce one million a week and have them certified as N95 masks to be used in all health-care settings.

Ford has blamed the supply shortages on a combination of delays in global shipments, domestic manufacturing lag time and U.S. restrictions.

Late Monday, manufacturer 3M reached a deal with the White House to continue sending masks to Canada, shortly after U.S. officials held up a shipment of 500,000 masks.

Ontario is reporting 379 new cases of COVID-19 today, including 21 more deaths.

That brings the totals in the province to 4,726 confirmed cases, including 153 deaths and 1,802 cases that have been resolved.

The new cases represent an 8.7 per cent increase over Monday, marking the second day in a row that the growth rate has been under 10 per cent.

There are now 614 people in Ontario hospitalized with COVID-19, with 233 of them in intensive care and 187 of those people on ventilators.

There are at least 51 long-term care homes in Ontario with one or more cases of COVID-19, and there have been at least 69 deaths in those institutions.

More than 500 health-care workers in the province have tested positive, representing about 11 per cent of all of the confirmed cases in Ontario.