Even as medical-grade equipment like face masks are in great demand across the world to protect frontline medical professionals who are dealing with Covid-19 patients, Canada’s seniormost health official has said the country has started exploring the possibility of decontaminating such material for their reuse.

Personal protective equipment or PPE like face masks keep medical workers safe as they treat and care for patients suffering from Covid-19 disease. However, with demand high, the supply of such masks has become a matter of contention.

Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam has asked hospitals and medical facilities throughout the country not to dispose of used masks since public health officials are looking into whether they can be disinfected for reused.

“I think it is one of the most important and I think worthwhile lines of pursuit for PPE right now,” she said, as several entities in the country were working on a process for decontamination that would make the material reusable and safe for healthcare workers.

Given this ongoing research, she also asked authorities across Canada to retain such PPE. She said she was “signalling to provinces and territories that certain things shouldn’t be thrown away right now, so that we can actually implement this should we find the actual people who can do this.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already announced that several million masks will be reaching the country early this week from China, even as an amicable resolution to the matter of the United States barring export of such N-95 masks to Canada appears likely. “I am confident we are going to be able to solve this,” Trudeau said.

The coronavirus outbreak looks set to tip Canada’s economy into recession and the Liberal government of Prime Minister Trudeau has already announced stimulus measures totaling C$105 billion ($74 billion) in direct spending, or five per cent of gross domestic product.

Almost half the cases in Canada are in the province of Quebec, where premier Francois Legault said on Sunday he hoped to see new diagnoses peak in a number of weeks. He also told reporters he was extending a shutdown of non-essential businesses for another three weeks to May 4.