Spring Festival, the most important traditional holiday in China, is normally a time of celebration with families reunion and friends gathering. But this year, the COVID-19 broke out in China just before the Spring Festival.
In the face of the epidemic, many enterprises have cancelled the Spring Festival holiday one after another and devoted themselves to production without hesitation to ensure quality and expand supply.
During the Spring Festival, in order to ensure the supply of raw materials for medical prevention and control, Hengli Petrochemical Co., Ltd. worked diligentl. Each device was running at full capacity. The polypropylene products produced every day could supply 400 million mask raw materials. It can greatly alleviate the shortage of raw materials for key medical prevention and control materials such as medical masks, protective clothing, etc., ensure the stability of the market price of raw materials, and provide the necessary conditions to win the battle against epidemic.
Miao Wei, the minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, led a team to Tianjin to investigate the production of masks and disinfection products of enterprises. Miao Wei said at the scene that the maximum production capacity of masks in China is more than 20 million pieces per day. At present, many enterprises have stopped taking vacations and worked overtime. More than 30 enterprises have resumed production. The output reaches more than 8 million pieces a day, and we are confident in ensuring the market supply.
Li Lingshen, the vice president of CNTAC and the president of CNITA, and Li Guimei, the vice president of CNITA, represented CNTAC in the supply and demand of epidemic prevention and control materials meeting held in Beijing. At the meeting, a report was made on the inventory and production of masks and protective clothing.
Li Lingshen accompanied the leaders of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to the site of Xinxiangs mask and protective clothing production base to investigate and solve the problems. On January 27, CNITA cancelled the Spring Festival holiday and officially resumed work to help enterprises coordinate the supply of materials such as masks and medical protective clothing.
CHTC Jiahua Nonwoven Co., Ltd. has fully resumed work and put into production, and has stepped up the production of non-woven raw materials for protective articles with full power. According to statistics, 120 tons of non-woven fabric raw materials for masks and protective clothing can be produced every day. The products are mainly used in the production of medical mask fabrics, filter elements and protective clothing.
Huoshenshan Hospital was officially completed. It took 10 days from design to completion. On the night of January 24, the teams of Oriental Yuhong, BGE, and Tiandingfeng Holding Co., Ltd. gathered quickly to take the initiative to undertake the construction of waterproof and anti-seepage and protection projects. A team consisting of more than 50 chief technical staff, project managers, and construction workers was put in place to determine the technical plan and warehouse logistics scheduling overnight. Under the premise of “engineering quality first”, in only half a day, Tiandingfeng will load the geotextiles stored in the warehouse, and send 40,000 square meters of geotextiles to Wuhan. According to Nie Songlin, chairman of Tiandingfeng Holding Co., Ltd., the company assisted a total of 160,000 square meters of geotextiles to Wuhan, all in accordance with the standards of Beijing Xiaotangshan Hospital, with a total value of 2.6 million yuan, all provided for free.
Under the epidemic prevention and control, there is a huge demand for medical materials such as masks and isolation gowns. Jining Jianda Medical Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. is speeding up the production of protective masks and other medical materials. In order to fully guarantee the production efficiency, Ruyis 10 technical backbones cancelled their leave and joined the first-line production of the well-known enterprises. On February 2, In the Jianda medical production workshop, mask production equipment has been fully started, 24-hour uninterrupted production. With the arrival of equipment and the rapid assistance of Ruyi technical backbone, the production of protective clothing and surgical clothing will be greatly increased to ensure the urgent medical material supply.
The production line of Gangsong Protection Technology Co., Ltd., located in Wujiang District, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, was busy. The KN95 masks and disposable non-woven masks produced by this enterprise will be uniformly allocated by the government. It is understood that this enterprise was originally a bankruptcy liquidation enterprise. After Jiangsu Shenghong Group learned this information, in order to guarantee the supply of medical supplies during the COVID-19 prevention period, a special support fund of 30 million yuan was set up to revive the enterprise. Regarding the prevention and control materials produced by the enterprise, the Group will also provide the government with a unified allocation through procurement and donation to provide protection for the material shortage as soon as possible.
The Haizhou Development Zone coordinated urgently, Lianyungang Jindian Textile Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of ZGL Group, purchased two full-automatic mask production lines. ZGL Group completed the project negotiation and procurement within 24 hours, completed the project equipment transportation and resumed the production of two medical mask production lines within 48 hours. After successful production, it will produce 100,000 to 150,000 medical masks per day.
The special report of “Fight Against the Epidemic” in the column of “Morning News” of CCTV interviewed the CNTAC on the production resumption of medical and health textiles since the outbreak.
Affected by factors such as the extension of the Spring Festival holiday and the control of personnel movements, in the face of the emergency demand for medical and health textiles in the event of an epidemic, there was a temporary shortage of raw materials for protective clothing and masks and the supply of spare parts. By actively coordinating with local industry and information departments, CNTAC helps enterprises to connect demand and production materials information, and has effectively promoted the key enterprises in the industry to start production.
A CCTV reporter learned from CNTAC: “From the Spring Festival holiday to the present, more than 60% of Chinas medical and health textile enterprises have begun to resume production.”
The State Council issued the “Notice on Effectively Strengthening Scientific Prevention and Control of Epidemic Situations and Orderly Resumption of Production of Enterprises”. The “Notice” pointed out that all regions and departments and relevant enterprises should adopt a high sense of responsibility, and formulate targeted measures in accordance with the principles of science, reasonableness, moderation, and usefulness. They must not only do a good job of the epidemic situation after the Spring Festival, to ensure peoples life safety and health, but also coordinate and solve the difficulties and problems in the resumption of work as soon as possible, and provide adequate material guarantee for the prevention and control of the epidemic, and provide strong support for the overall economic and social stability.
In order to combat the COVID-19 epidemic, CNTAC took the initiative to not only forward the“Notice on Strengthening the Party Leadership of Industry Associations to Provide Strong Political Guarantee for Winning the Fight Against Epidemic”, but also formulated and issued the “CNTACs Work Arrangement for the Prevention and Control of COVID-19 Epidemic”, while doing its own epidemic prevention work, under the unified leadership of the CNTAC Party Committee, professional associations and relevant units and industry media actively participate and take the initiative responsibilities, and actively exerted their due strengths for the ultimate victory of epidemic prevention and control.
In particular, it attaches great importance to the related work of the China Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Association. The leaders fully cooperate with relevant national ministries and commissions to do a good job of research, sorting out, and coordination. The Association responded quickly and took the lead in launching the “Proposal on Member Enterprises Resumption of Work in Advance to Ensure the Supply of Important Materials”, and together with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and related units went to Henan and other places to investigate the resumption of work of medical mask and protective clothing manufacturers and the actual production situation, played an important role in the effective supply of anti-epidemic materials.
The COVID-19 outbreak has driven the full speed of non-woven production across the country, particularly in Xiantao city, Hubei Province, best known as China Famous City for Non-Woven, a city home to over a hundred of non-woven manufacturing enterprises.
According to the city government, there are 137 enterprises producing protective gear, of which 113 enterprises are specialized in medical and health textiles.
As of February 9, 83 of them have resumed production in Spring Festival holidays to respond to demand urgency at a time when the whole country is mobilized to fight coronavirus. Among these 83 working manufacturers, 10 enterprises work on medical and health garment, 28 on non-woven, 45 for face masks and protective clothing, leaving 30 enterprises yet to go into production after in-situ qualification survey and accreditation by expert procedures.
To stand up to the public health emergency, local government plays a very important role in marshalling resources through organizational efficiency and responsible leadership in stepped-up efforts to quickly resume production in time of need. The update on February 8 shows that the daily output of protective clothing has reached 30,000 pieces, a target set by provincial government, temporarily easing the shortage of supply.
Furthermore, the city government of Xiantao issued “Regulation on Production Order for Non-Woven Manufacturers” to make sure that the existing protective textiles enterprises measure up to the industrial, social and environmental standards in all perspectives on corporate-compliant basis.
The State Council held a press conference on the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic situation by the central enterprise.
Ren Hongbin, a member of the Party Committee and deputy director of SASAC, introduced that the central enterprises overcame difficulties and tried their best to change production when they did not produce medical protective clothing, masks and other medical materials. Currently, Xinxing Cathay International Group produces 45,000 sets of medical protective clothing per day, and Sinomach, Sinopec, and Norinco Group produce 1.3 million medical masks per day.
Ren Hongbin said that the central enterprises have also stepped up the development of key scarce equipment such as mask machines, and will also begin mass production in the near future. While accelerating the production of medical materials, we will increase the intensity of pharmaceutical research and development. CNBG, a subsidiary of Sinopharm Group, took the lead in developing a COVID-19 nucleic acid molecule detection kit with a production capacity of 200,000 copies per day, and put forward suggestions for the preparation of recovery period plasma for clinical.
“Civil Health Masks” group standard promulgated
On March 11, the “Civil Health Masks” group standard drafted by the China Nonwovens & Industrial Textiles Association (CNITA) was officially released. The promulgation and implementation of the standard will provide technical support for related mask manufacturers, provide a basis for market supervision, and facilitate consumers to choose suitable masks.
Existing mask standard
Civil protective mask standard: GB/T 32610-2016 “Technical Specifications for Daily Protective Masks”, GB 2626-2006 “Self-priming Filtering Anti-particulate Respirator for Respiratory Protective Products”, which is mainly applicable to particulate matter protection and played an important role in this epidemic, but a large number of barrier masks (mainly flat masks) were used in the resumption of work and production, which could not meet the requirements of the above two standards.
Medical field standards: GB 19083-2010 “Technical Requirements for Medical Protective Masks”, YY 0469-2011 “Medical Surgical Masks”, and YY/T 0969-2013 “Disposable Medical Masks” are mainly applicable to the medical field.
On March 11, T/CNTAC 55-2020 and T/CNITA 09104-2020 standards for “Civil Health Masks” were released. This standard applies to civilian sanitary masks used by ordinary people in the daily environment to block the transmission of particles such as droplets, pollen and microorganisms.
This standard revolves around the functions and safety settings of masks, which mainly include materials and wearing safety, necessary barrier functions, and special attention to wearing comfort. And special provisions for childrens masks.
The main contents of “Civil Health Masks”
◎Suitable for getting back to work and school, it can effectively block the transmission of particles such as droplets, pollen and microorganisms;
◎Divided into adult masks and childrens masks, the specifications are large (L), medium (M) and small (S);
◎Clearly wear safety and materials, there should be no accessible sharp points and sharp edges, childrens masks should use ear-hanging mask straps, there should be no removable small parts, etc. Childrens mask straps should not have free ends, masks raw materials should not use recycled materials, and materials that come in direct contact with the skin must not be dyed, etc.;
◎Highlight the barrier function of the mask, the bacterial filtration efficiency is not less than 95%, and the particulate matter filtration efficiency is not less than 90%;
◎Prominent wearing comfort of masks, ventilation resistance of adult masks is set to≤49Pa, and ventilation resistance of childrens masks is set to ≤30Pa;
◎It also clearly specifies the residual ethylene oxide, color fastness to dry rubbing, formaldehyde content, pH value, decomposable carcinogenic aromatic amine dyes, microbiological indicators, flame retardancy and other indicators.