Man Facing Jail Time For Stealing Face Masks From London Hospital

A man was arrested after reportedly stealing surgical face masks from a hospital in London. He later admitted to the charges and is now facing jail time.

According to Metropolitan Police, they were called to King's College Hospital in south London on Sunday, April 5, after hospital security staff detained 34-year-old Lerun Hussein for stealing three face masks. Hussein was, then, arrested on suspicion of theft.

On Tuesday, he pleaded guilty to the charges at Croydon Magistrate's Court and was sentenced to three months in prison, each month representing a face mask that he stole.

The act occurred at a time when the world is in dire need of surgical face masks due to the coronavirus pandemic. The United Kingdom has been among the places hit particularly hard by the outbreak, with over 61,000 confirmed cases and over 7,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In many hospitals all over the world, health workers have been struggling with the lack of personal protective equipment that could shield them from contracting the virus.

For a while, authorities advised members of the public that only those who are ill have to wear face masks in public so as to prevent potentially exposing others to the virus and those who are "healthy" do not need to wear them.

However, as evidence mounted about asymptomatic people or those with mild symptoms inadvertently spreading the virus to others, possibly the more vulnerable people, U.S. authorities reviewed the guidelines to see whether they need to be changed. Now, even though the World Health Organization still maintains that healthy people don’t need to wear face masks as it could also lead to a false sense of security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending people to wear face masks in public, particularly in places where social distancing measures are difficult to observe.

That said, the ill and the health workers who tend to them are still the ones who are most in need of surgical face masks and N-95 masks. Given the short supply of medical masks, the CDC is advising people to refrain from using surgical face masks and, instead, to use alternative face masks such as ones made from materials that can be found at home such as old shirts, coffee filters or bandanas.