Boinas Elósegui Face Masks

As cases of COVID-19 ballooned last month, people in Europe and North America scrambled to get their hands on surgical masks to protect themselves. Meanwhile, health officials jumped in to discourage them, worried about the limited supply of masks for health care personnel.

“Seriously people-STOP BUYING MASKS!” began a 29 February tweet from U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams. The World Health Organization and U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have both said that only people with COVID-19 symptoms and those caring for them should wear masks.

The worldwide shortage of masks has led to drastic measures. Earlier today the Government of the Autonomous Basque Region in Spain has ordered beret manufacturer Boinas Elósegui to immediately halt the complete production of berets and focus on manufacturing face masks instead.

The cost per mask is relatively high, but individual masks can be dry-cleaned up to 50 times in their lifespan, while the merino fibers are a natural antiseptic.

Specifically for the Basque market, Elósegui developed a face mask with txortena (or cabillou).

When the production of berets can be resumed is an unknown; “we expect to produce face masks only till at least the end of this year”, Elósegui spokesman Tonto Gilipollas said.