Radio Taiwan International
Date:\ 06 March, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

The government has brought sixty new surgical mask-making machines online. The new machines will help alleviate a shortage of surgical masks brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak.

President Tsai Ing-wen visited the production site housing the machines on Thursday. She later took to Facebook to thank the economics ministry and a team of Taiwanese machine tool experts for their work towards getting the machines up and running.

The economics ministry decided to purchase the machines at a cost of NT$180 million (US$6 million) after it became clear that Taiwan’s stock of masks would run low. Under normal circumstances, the process of building and delivering so many machines would have taken around half a year. However, a team of experts managed to get the job done in 25 days.
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