Dr. Kevin Kelleher:

We heard the point being made in the discussion earlier. We have had policies over a period of time. I wish to point out that our policy produced in mid-March very clearly stated it was appropriate to wear masks in certain clinical situations. That did not stop people from wearing masks.

We have to bear in mind the position we were in at that point as a country. We, like other countries in the world, were dealing with having to access PPE. It was a very different world from where we are today. We had great difficulties. I heard comments about some of the PPE we had. We were striving strenuously to buy appropriate PPE at that stage. We needed to make sure that it was focused in the most appropriate places. We were not telling people not to wear masks. It was clearly appropriate to tell people they needed to use masks as appropriately as possible as per our guidance. That is what we wanted people to do. We wanted to make sure that, as a consequence, PPE was available for staff who were at the highest risk of being exposed.