eNews April 29, 2026

How is COVID-19 affecting your business, your people, your customers? IMDA is a membership organization, and in times like these, we can all use some camaraderie. If you have a COVID story to share, advice to offer, or a warning to sound, send it to Mark Thill, IMDA’s communications director, at [email protected], with the subject line “IMDA COVID story.” We’ll compile them and send them back out to you.

28-day shift for COVID

Forty-three workers at a petrochemical plant in Pennsylvania recently finished a 28-day shift producing the raw materials – including polypropylene – used in face masks and surgical gowns, reports The Washington Post. The 43 workers at the Braskem plant in Marcus Hook worked 12-hour shifts for a month straight. Air mattresses served as beds; the office kitchen became a mess hall; and the factory’s emergency operations center became a lounge room.

At-home use of fetal and maternal monitors

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to expand indications for non-invasive fetal dopplers and maternal monitoring devices for use in the home, at least for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. The expanded indications would apply to devices previously cleared only for use in hospitals or other healthcare facilities, and would allow for 1) increased remote monitoring capability and 2) the ability to make the device more mobile for facilitating transfer into and out of a vehicle and into a patient’s home.

Elective procedures returning

The resumption of elective procedures should be good news for hospitals, since such procedures represent 50-80% of revenues in most hospitals, and 70-90% in medical specialties such as orthopedics and urology, according to The Keckley Report. On April 19, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued guidance on providing essential non-COVID-19 care to patients without symptoms of COVID-19 in regions with low and stable incidence of the virus.

European device makers catch a break

European manufacturers of medical devices caught a break on April 24 when the European Council voted to delay implementation of the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) for one year, to May 26, 2021. MDR compliance calls for manufacturers to: 1) adopt a total-product-lifecycle approach to CE Marking certification; 2) learn how MDR affects human-factors engineering and usability requirements; and 3) prepare for enhanced post-market surveillance and post-market clinical follow-up of their devices.