Coronavirus: ministers blew £150m on unusable masks from British banker

A paramedic gets help fitting a face mask during the coronavirus pandemic

(Image credit: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

published 6 August 2020

At the peak of Britain’s coronavirus outbreak, the UK government spent £150m on 43.5 million unusable face masks delivered by a little-known investment company.

Officials have admitted that the masks, which had elastic ear-loops rather than straps which fasten behind the head, “did not meet standards and could not be used in the NHS”, The Times reports.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox