Province uses Liquor Marts to distribute medical-grade masks

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This article was published 22/12/2021 (1785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WHEN customers pop in to their local Liquor Mart to buy a bottle of scotch or a case of beer, they can also grab a free box of KN95 masks to ward off the Omicron variant.

The province is using Manitoba Liquor Marts to hand out the masks, Crown Services Minister Reg Helwer announced on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.

“As the province continues to support Manitobans protecting themselves from the increased spread of the Omicron variant, the province is partnering with (Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries) to make KN95 masks available at Liquor Marts and casinos in the coming days.”

He went on to say customers can request and receive a box of masks at no cost from any Winnipeg Liquor Mart or one of the MLL-operated casinos starting today and Liquor Marts and liquor vendors across Manitoba after Christmas.”

Several people told the Free Press they requested and were given a box of masks at city Liquor Marts Wednesday afternoon.

An employee at the Portage Avenue and Banning Street outlet said he was surprised by the sudden influx of customers requesting masks and said he didn’t know how people had found out they had masks in advance of today’s rollout.

One customer, Nathan Laser, said he’d found out from a Free Press news story based on Helwer’s tweet.

He called the initiative “a reasonably good place to start.”

“It’s obviously a place where people are going during the holidays, so it makes sense as a distribution point.”

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said he doesn’t go to Liquor Marts often and thinks masks should be distributed at other places as well.

“If you make the masks available in other locations, like libraries, community centres… other points where the average Manitoban can get access to them, that would be a good thing,” he said.

Demand for higher quality masks has been sparked by concern cloth masks and surgical masks do not provide enough protection against Omicron, a highly infectious variant of the novel coronavirus that is spreading rapidly throughout the community.

Although the majority of the 400 new cases reported in Manitoba Wednesday involve the Delta variant, officials predict Omicron is on track to become the dominant strain.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jazz Atwal, the deputy chief provincial health officer, said one-quarter to one-third of all new cases are suspected to be Omicron. The samples need to be sequenced by a lab before that can be confirmed.

The five-day test positivity rate provincewide is 9.9 per cent.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca