The ministry procured a billion masks, and is now burning them: One man is to blame

According to Spiegel, the ministry procured unusable masks from China last year, which will have to be destroyed. To this day, they have hidden it from the public.
In early spring of last year, when the pandemic hit Europe with full force, the obligation of "mouth and nose cover" was introduced in Germany, for example in stores. This formulation was not chosen by chance - it was enough to wear a scarf or shawl over the mouth and nose, or any homemade mask. Because, even the greatest enthusiasts could not find real hospital or FFP2 masks in shops and pharmacies.
In that panic, the Ministry of Health procured hundreds of millions of masks from China, which, as SPIEGEL magazine now reveals, proved to be unusable. In Germany, they received permits quickly, without valid testing, but mostly remained in warehouses.
The internal correspondence that the weekly Spiegel has an insight into shows that the Ministry of Health, led by the Christian Democrat Jens Spahn, has been conducting a lively correspondence with the Ministry of Labor, led by the Social Democrat Hubertus Heil, for months. Because, in the end, the Ministry of Labor issues use permits for masks, and it did not want to approve these. According to the weekly, the Spahn's ministry even tried to distribute the masks to social assistance recipients, people with disabilities and the homeless, instead of for regular use.
A compromise is now reportedly being prepared: unusable masks should be declared a national reserve, waited for their expiration date in four years, and then burned. "A billion euros will end up in the trash," Spiegel writes.

Spahn in trouble

It may be that the documents did not reach the journalists by accident right now. At the end of September,...