The website of a manufacturer of (among other things) surgical masks contains a blogpost dated March 13, 2020 (written in Italian). In it, it is claimed that a shipment of 830,000 surgical masks destined for CoVid-19-stricken Italy was on its way from Rotterdam to Italy when it was blocked by German authorities (on the basis of the recent export ban for such equipment). According to the blogpost, German authorities were contacted and agreed to release the shipment, but now the whereabouts of the 830,000 masks is unknown.
Nonostante il lascia passare delle autorità tedesche, attualmente non sappiamo dove si trovino le mascherine e stiamo facendo il possibile per riuscire a recuperarle.
In English (please correct if I mistranslated):
Even though German authorities let [the shipment] pass, we currently do not know where the masks are located and we do everything we can to get them back.
Unfortunately, my Italian is not good enough to understand the spoken language in the linked video.
Note that when some X is confiscated and then released again, but that X cannot be found anymore at the time of the release, the implication is that X has been taken and repurposed, possibly by the very party confiscating it in the first place. I am not asking about this implication here. In fact, digging up more evidence in favour of the existence of this incident at all might shed more light on whether things really are as reported in the blogpost later on.
The reason why I'm wondering about the accuracy of this report is that, for one, I cannot find any mention of this incident in German, Italian, or Swiss media. Furthermore, the incident does sound quite similar to another very recent incident in Czech Republic, which was reported on in various media.
