EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated twice to reflect two sets of clarifications made by an Ontario government source and Premier Doug Ford about the number of ordered/blocked masks.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford says the province ordered roughly three or four million medical masks from American supplier 3M only to have them blocked at the border on Sunday amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But Ford said he was told Monday that 500,000 of those masks are being released to Ontario.
All of this comes on the heels of a statement last week by 3M saying that the Trump administration had ordered the company to stop exporting N95 respirators to Canada and Latin America.
Ford said in interviews with media on Monday morning that an order of three million masks had been blocked at the U.S. border on Sunday.
An Ontario government source then clarified that it was actually 500,000 — not three million — medical masks held up at the border, but said they had since been released.
Then after that, Ford spoke to media at his daily press conference to offer additional explanation.
[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates ]
“What I understand is we had three million masks that were stopped by U.S. officials coming out of 3M in South Dakota,” Ford said.
“I just was briefed not long ago saying we were able to get 500,000 N95 masks moving forward that should be released today coming into Ontario.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had earlier on Monday declined to confirm that the shipment was blocked, saying only that Canadian officials continue talks with U.S. officials about the situation.
“We are working very closely with all provinces and monitoring the levels of personal protective equipment and the challenges they’re facing,” Trudeau said in his daily media briefing.
“We continue to have productive and positive conversations with the United States emphasizing for them that health-care supplies and workers across the border are very much a two-way street.”
Earlier on Monday, Ford had called the blockage at the border “unacceptable.”
“We had three million masks stopped at the border this weekend coming up to Canada. That’s unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable that they’re doing this,” Ford said in an interview with Global News.
“Hopefully we’re going to work through it and get an exemption for Canada.”
As a result, Ford said the province now expects to run out of masks and other personal protective equipment for healthcare workers next week.
He later added during his press conference that the 500,000 masks being released should buy Ontario healthcare workers an extra week of personal protective equipment, but that the situation was still dire.
“I don’t want to be crying wolf unless it’s real, and I’m being serious,” he said.
Ford and provincial health professionals shared modelling on Friday of how hard the coronavirus could hit Ontarians over the next two years.
That modelling suggests 1,600 Ontarians could be dead by the end of the month, with between 3,000 to 15,000 dead within 18 months to two years.
Ford used the numbers to urge Ontarians to stay in their homes and practice strict physical distancing, citing that without the measures taken so far to try to contain the spread, the death toll projections for April in Ontario would be 6,000 individuals.
The coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 1.2 million people worldwide and killed 70,356.
In Canada, there are 15,496 confirmed cases and 280 deaths so far.
© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
