MORE than 40 million pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) have been flown into Bournemouth Airport since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
The latest delivery on Friday morning (June 12) saw 370,000 gowns arrive from China on a specially chartered flight.
The latest delivery was due to be immediately unloaded and delivered into the NHS Supply Chain (NHSSC), which distributes to hospitals across the country.
British firm Crest Medical, which supplies PPE to the NHS, would normally bring in the haul by sea freight which takes about 12 weeks to arrive from China.
Due to the urgent and significant increase in demand, Crest partnered with Bournemouth-based aviation services company European Aviation to privately charter cargo planes and specifically adapted passenger planes to ensure the PPE supply was maintained during the crisis.
However, regular flights have been landing at Hurn, reducing the time it takes to get supplies to the UK to around four days.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 10 planes have arrived at Bournemouth Airport from Malaysia and China bringing in more than 40 million units of PPE.
Items delivered so far include 740,000 gowns and 720,000 suits from China with 40million individual gloves coming over from Malaysia across two flights.
A further 40 flights are set to arrive in the next two months, bringing the total to more than 65 million pieces of PPE including medical gloves, gowns, suits, eye protection and theatre caps.
The flights will take place every one to three weeks until the end of July.
Alastair Maxwell, managing director of Crest Medical, said: “With a robust supply chain, we were able to act quickly and adapt how we brought PPE into the country to maintain and then increase the delivery of this vital equipment to the NHS frontline. We are immensely proud to use our expertise and our long-term relationships with manufacturers and suppliers to ensure our incredible frontline workers get the medical-grade PPE as they battle every day to save lives.”
Paul Stoddart, chairman of European Aviation, said: “I’m very proud of our association with Crest Medical. We’ve forged a great working partnership between the two companies to help meet the PPE needs of the NHS. We converted the aircraft from passengers to freight and together we’ve delivered over 40 million pieces of PPE.”
PPE flights and numbers for NHS
● 40 million individual gloves (20 million pairs of gloves)
● 16.2 million gowns
● 720,000 type 3b suits
● 2.6 million theatre caps
● 300,000 eye protectors
● 5.8 million overshoes
TOTAL: 65,620,000 pieces
