Vice President Mike Pence said that people in the United States shouldn’t be rushing out to purchase face masks as the coronavirus continues to spread.
Speaking with CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Pence addressed concerns about the lack of testing kits in the U.S. and said that 15,000 of the kits have gone out in the last 48 hours. He also said the government entered into a contract with a company to produce 30 million face masks per month in order to bolster the stockpile of about 43 million masks currently available.
“I want to say to your viewers though, it is not necessary for Americans to go out and buy masks,” Pence said.
The vice president, who has been put in charge of leading the U.S. response to the outbreak, said that getting masks to the healthcare providers is the foremost matter regarding the distribution.
“We want to make sure — and the president has made this clear to me — we want to make sure that people that are treating people that have contracted the coronavirus have the protective gear, the masks, and the gloves, and we’re working very energetically to accomplish that.”
Globally, there have been more than 86,000 cases and 2,979 deaths, most of which are in mainland China. Fears of a worldwide pandemic have sent stocks plummeting. In the U.S., there have been 71 cases of the illness, otherwise known as the COVID-19 virus. The U.S. saw its first death from the illness on Saturday when a person in Washington state succumbed to the infection.
