The Vatican says it will send 100,000 surgical masks provided by Taiwan to countries in Africa. That’s half of a recent donation of masks Taiwan made to the Vatican.
The head of the Vatican Pharmacy, Brother Thomas Binish Mulackal, had earlier asked the Taiwanese embassy to let the Vatican redistribute the face masks. Ambassador Matthew Lee replied that the Vatican is free to use the donated masks as it sees fit.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the Vatican’s COVID-19 task force, had also spoken with Lee about joint assistance for African countries, many of which are under-equipped to combat COVID-19.
In total, Taiwan has so far donated 480,000 face masks to the Vatican.