French Town’s Moroccan Mask Shipment Stuck at Customs Amid COVID-19 Crisis

"Everything is blocked in customs, we had opted for road transport from Morocco, and we have no information," explains Pascal Jomain, director general of services, to Le Progrès.

With an initial available stock, the town hall of Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure had provided masks to healthcare personnel and facilities caring for vulnerable people, before validating two orders, one with Morocco and the other with the East Lyonnais community of municipalities (CCEL).

"Between the allocation of masks from the Region, the process of which is taking time, the blocking of our order and the requisitions on the stocks ordered by the CCEL, nothing is going as planned," says Mayor Jean-Pierre Jourdain.

The town hall should receive nearly 6,500 surgical masks and 8,000 washable and AFNOR certified fabric pieces for the population.