Illinois Governor J.
B. Pritzker called out the White House on Monday, said that the medical masks sent to them were the wrong type and are totally not effective.
At a news conference, he said that the federal government promised him 300,000 N95 masks, the type the doctors use when treating COVID-19 patients.
Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told before that the surgical masks, the type sent to Illinois, are not effective in preventing coronavirus transmission.
“My team is sorting through the shipment of 300,000 N95 masks the White House personally told me would be sent to our state, and while we do not have a final count on this yet, I can say with certainty that what they sent were not the N95 masks that were promised but instead were surgical masks, which is not what we asked for,” the Democrat governor said.
Pritzker added, “I can’t emphasize enough how much we need the federal government to step up and amplify the size of their (personal protective equipment) deliveries to Illinois and, frankly, across the nation.”
This was the third shipment of personal protective equipment sent by the federal government to Illinois, which arrived Sunday.
According to Pritzker, they have put in theiy initial request several weeks ago, asking for more than 1.2 million N95 masks, 900,000 surgical masks, 1.6 million gloves, 24,000 gowns, 24,000 goggles, 120,000 face shields and 4,000 respirators.
However, the governor said that they only received a “fraction” of their request, and the same goes with their second and larger request.
The news comes after President Donald Trump clashed with Democratic Governors, who are confronting the President’s desire for public praise and appreciation in handling the spread of the disease.
Trump even accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of requesting more ventilators than required, and improperly storing them, and asserted that he had a “big problem” with a “young, woman governor of Michigan,” and said she is someone who “doesn’t have a clue” when she asked the federal government for medical equipment.