Community news|18/03/20

Covid-19 and availability of PPE

Home > The news of EUROGIP and occupational risks in Europe > Covid-19 and availability of PPE

The European Safety Federation (ESF) stresses the unavailability of certain types of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or those that are using them in their day-to-day work in industry.

As a result of the current global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus, the demand for certain types of PPE has increased significantly. This has a profound impact on the availability of PPE for workforces. The situation has been exacerbated by individual countries applying restrictions on the free movement of PPE.

Due to this high demand, for those industrial workers, either there is no protection available or they have to use other types of protection (if there are alternatives). This will require interrogating their risk assessment, revisiting their hazard control policies and specifying adequate and suitable alternatives and re-sourcing PPE and the retraining of the individuals, which all is impossible overnight.

The other alternative is to stop the production in industry through lack of suitable PPE or alternative control measures. This only creates even more economic problems for the global community.

To find out more

Discover other news

Abroad

29/11/24

GREAT BRITAIN: workplace accident figures 2023-2024

On Wednesday 20 November, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published its accident statistics for the period 2023-2024. It reveals a relatively stable situation compared with the previous period, but with higher rates than in the pre-pandemic period of 2018-2019.