Ontario’s Premier today told health care staff fighting COVID-19 that following next week, they will be left exposed, without the personal protections needed to keep them from getting infected.

Michael Hurley President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is urging the Premier to use the government’s considerable powers under the new emergency measures “to get masks produced immediately” by local manufacturers. The government also needs to extend Directives on personal protective equipment to cover physicians and all other health care staff.

“If health care workers fall to COVID-19 in large numbers, our health system will have great difficulty functioning,” says Hurley.