RB4

Senator Joni Ernst traveled to southeast Iowa this week to visit businesses and to see their successes and hard work during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of Ernst’s stops was at MD Orthopaedics in Wayland. The company has created thousands of face shields for local hospitals and nursing homes during the pandemic. State Representative Joe Mitchell, whose family operates the business, was in attendance and said why it was important for the visit, “It was a great visit. We also explained to her how we came up with the mold to be able to make the face shields and supply PPE to southeast Iowa. It would have been easy just to say, ‘That’s not our problem, we don’t have to worry about it. We’re going to keep operations as normal.’ But we thought it was the right thing to do and that’s so important to realize that the majority of small business owners were willing to step up to the plate and make a difference and help their communities out.” Ernst took a tour of the facility and answered questions as part of her 99-county tour. To this day, 27,000 face shields have been made by MD Orthopaedics.