The Biden administration said it will use the U.S. Defense Production Act to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic in a plan that includes a large increase in vaccine purchases. Also on tap is an increase in production of at-home test by six companies in addition to Ellume Ltd., of Perth, Australia, which will ship more than 8 million of their tests to the U.S. by the end of the year.

Novasignal Corp. has a launched a cloud-based app to provide alerts to clinicians directly from its cerebral ultrasound device. The new app allows physicians to get instant notifications from the company’s Novaguide device, a transcranial doppler ultrasound technology that allows for real-time assessment of blood flow in the brain by combining robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

Infectious diseases diagnostics company Lucira Health Inc. launched an IPO of 9 million shares of common stock at $17 per share, for expected gross proceeds of $153 million. Friday’s Wall Street debut was a show of confidence, upsized from an original plan to offer 7.8 million shares at $15 to $17. The Emeryville, Calif.-based company has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to acquire up to an additional 1,350,000 shares of common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions.

HONG KONG – Earlysense Ltd. has sold a contact-free continuous monitoring technology to global med-tech provider Hillrom Holdings Inc. Ramat Gan, Israel-based Earlysense will receive licensing for all intellectual property and technology sold to Chicago-based Hillrom for use outside the hospital along with $30 million in cash, commercial milestone payments and a portion of Hillrom's equity investment

U.S. FDA warning letters have been a staple of regulatory life since the late 1990s, but James Boiani, a regulatory attorney with Epstein, Becker & Green P.C., said it’s no stretch of the imagination that warning letter volumes will jump in 2021. This is to some extent because the volume of warning letters dropped significantly over the past four years, and Boiani advised that all FDA-regulated industries will see more warning letters unless they are communicative with the agency about inspectional findings.