Japan will give away 8.5 million remaining cloth masks

After a flood of requests from individuals and organizations, the health ministry announced on January 11 that some of the tens of millions of cloth masks left over from a Japanese government mask distribution program will be extended by two weeks.

The Abenomasks, popularly dubbed Abenomasks, were procured by the administration of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2020. $99.8 million were still sitting in storage.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry opened applications for the public to get some masks on December 24, 2021, and was set to accept requests until Jan. 14 this year. The deadline was extended to Jan. 28 after about 85,000 applications were received by Jan. 6. These applications account for at least 8.5 million masks, and are accepted in units of 100, although the figure is still a long way short of 80 million. Many of the requests were from individuals.

A ministry official said that without terminating the scheme, we'd like to distribute them to as many people who want as possible.

The program was beset by product problems, including stains, mold and insect infestations, and the Abe administration aimed to distribute two cloth masks to every household in Japan. Some people sent masks back because they were unwanted. It cost the Japanese government about 600 million yen about $5.2 million to store the leftover masks between August 2020 and March 2021. In December 2021, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida decided to give them away to anyone who wanted them, and instructed his government to dispose of masks by the end of March this year.

How do I get masks? Instructions on how to get them can be found on the health ministry website at: https: www.mhlw.