Amsterdam [Netherlands], Mar 29 : Netherlands government has ordered a retraction of around 600,000 China-made masks from the Dutch hospitals as they are "defective" and do not provide any protection against coronavirus infection.
The country had ordered a batch of 1.3 billion so-called FFP2 masks from China. The Ministry of Health has ordered a recall of around 600,000 pieces of them as they have already been distributed to hospitals, Dutch's NOS reported.,
The masks have been rejected by TNO (Netherlands Orgsation for Applied Scientific Research) because they do not meet the safety requirements.
The masks are already distributed among the hospitals. "The mouth masks that are not satisfactory are being retrieved," the Ministry of Health told the NOS. "We have no overview of whether defective mouth masks have also been used in hospitals."
Dutch public health agency RIVM said there were 9,762 people who tested positive for coronavirus in the Netherlands on Saturday, an increase of 1,159 over Friday's total. The agency added that 93 more people who tested positive later died, bringing the total number of Dutch fatal cases to 639.
This comes as Spain and the Czech Republic reported that China has delivered faulty coronavirus test kits to these countries.
( With inputs from ANI )