We’ve told you about switches fighting on the medical frontline against COVID-19, and about switches that make COVID-19 testing easier on all of us. Despite masks no longer being required on public transit, the pandemic is far from over, as COVID-19 case numbers would indicate. Europe is only a month removed from reporting nearly a million active cases in a day, and the United States is just three months removed from setting the new record for new confirmed cases.
The Russian war in Ukraine has especially exacerbated the COVID-19 situation. The two countries have combined to report nearly 100,000 new cases over the last seven days, which is likely much lower than the actual number of confirmed cases given the situation. Russia and Ukraine have also reported almost 2,000 new deaths from COVID-19 over the last seven days.
Administering COVID-19 vaccines has also been difficult in these war-torn countries. Roughly half of Russian citizens have reportedly been fully vaccinated, while just over a third of Ukrainians have received a full vaccination against COVID-19. Ukraine has been vaccinating residents since Feb. 24 of last year, so the war has severely limited the country’s ability to vaccinate its citizens. These unvaccinated residents are more susceptible to death if they contract COVID-19 and more likely to transmit the virus to others, which is a terrible situation for these refugees and the people trying to help them.
COVID-19 is still killing over 2,700 people per day, which means medical equipment like ventilators, IV pumps, and hospital beds are still in higher demand than they were pre-pandemic. E-switch provides many of the switches that help these medical devices and medical staff save lives.
Ventilators
We’ve all come to know ventilators to be the most important life-saving medical device in the fight against COVID-19. Availability of a ventilator can be the difference between life and death. This can be particularly perilous in rural places where hospitals serve small populations and don’t have enough medical devices and staff to handle the demands of COVID-19 outbreaks. This has spurred production of ventilators coming in all different shapes and sizes.
Regardless of shape or size, E-switch offers a versatile, long-life tactile switch that can be installed virtually anywhere your ventilator design demands. The TL6200 Series tactile switch offers a long operating life of ten million cycles and is rated to IP67 standards, protecting against dust and moisture.
This tact switch offers ample mounting options, with gull wing contacts or through-hole terminals. These tactile switches have multiple actuator lengths and optional caps.
These long life tactile switches operate in temperatures ranging from -40 to 85°C and measure 6.9mm x 6.2mm.
IV Pumps
Dehydration is always a risk when fighting a virus. Sweating is a healthy response to infection, but drinking water is impossible while on a ventilator. That’s where IV pumps jump into the fight against COVID-19.
IV pumps utilize many pushbutton switches requiring LED illumination. Our RP8100 Series pushbutton switch offers a dome cap in multiple colors and is available as a non-illuminated or discrete dot pattern in multiple LED illumination colors. Rated IP67 for moisture and dust exposure, the RP8100 series offers threaded or snap-in/press-fit panel mounting and provides solder lug or wire lead termination to make your installation even easier.
Hospital Beds
None of these devices would be much use without a hospital bed, many more of which are being produced with CPR functioning as a result of the pandemic. Some of these CPR functioning hospital beds utilize EarlySense technology to continually assess heart and respiratory rate 100 times per minute, resulting in a nine percent decrease in the length of overall hospital stays.
Another E-switch offering has the versatility to fit your hospital bed design. The TL1105 Series tactile switches feature a right angle mounting option, many actuator lengths, an earth ground terminal option (TLE1105), and multiple operating force options. Whatever the designs for your hospital bed, the TL1105 series tact switches are customizable to fit your needs.
Vaccination Lab Equipment
We can’t forget about the lab equipment that helps produce the vaccines that minimize the deadly symptoms of COVID-19. The vaccine was actually designed using a digital copy of the virus that was produced on computers in China and sent to the United States before the virus reached the states. The fact that a vaccine can be designed for a virus without the actual virus in hand is astounding in itself, but the turnaround time for the COVID-19 vaccine is also historic. No vaccine has ever been produced on such a mass scale so quickly, and we have the switches of computers and sophisticated lab equipment to thank.
A common E-switch product used in medical devices and lab equipment is the TL6215 Series sealed and illuminated tactile switch. It’s sealed to protect from dust and moisture at an IP67 rating and has many options. The TL6215 tact switch has right angle and through-hole mounting options, comes with five LED color options (or none at all), and four different cap options (or none at all).
E-switch has been doing its best to help its employees and clients help themselves and others. Whether it’s customizing switches with wire leads to meet demands of the medical device marketplace or allowing our office employees to work from home two days per week (which makes them more productive), E-switch has thrown plenty of punches in the fight against COVID-19. But the fight is far from over. Keep pressing our buttons, COVID-19. See where that gets you.
