Forty workers who volunteered to live and work at a manufacturing plant to make a raw material needed for protective masks go home for the first time in 28 days (6 Pics)

Staff who have been living at a Pennsylvania manufacturing plant for the past month to help make personal protective medical equipment amid the coronavirus pandemic have finally been home. 

More than 40 employees at the Braskem America plant in Marcus Hook, near Philadelphia, shut themselves off from the outside world and spent 28 days making polypropylene — a raw material needed to make N95 masks, medical gowns, hoods and sanitary wipes which are vital in ensuring protection from Covid-19. 

Braskem set up the live-in rotation to 'to help ensure the health and safety of our team members who are working as an essential service throughout this crisis to keep these key supply lines running,' the company reported in a news release. 

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The company provided workers with beds, kitchens, groceries, iPads and internet access and staff were given a salary raise. 

Staff were finally allowed home Sunday after working 12-hour shifts away from home. 

Above, staff clock out after 28 days inside the plant. They can be seen grinning as they queue and wait to leave work

Living quarters were set up in the manufacturing plant (pictured above) while staff spent the past 28 days

At the half-way point of their month-long stay they were treated with a drive-by visit from family and friends waving signs and sounding their horns in support, WPVI reported.

Joe Boyce, operations shift supervisor, said:  'We're truly honored to be able to give back and support people we will never meet in some way.

'All the first responders, all the people on the front lines, we thank you. That's what makes our job easy to do.'

Above, a worker loads his personal belongings into a vehicle ready to go home for the first time in 28 days. Staff have been given a week off before normal shift patterns resume

Polypropylene is a raw material needed to make N95 masks, medical gowns, hoods and sanitary wipes, vital in protection against Covid-19

Staff were split into two groups and worked 12-hour shifts to make polypropylene

The workers will be given a week off before returning to a normal shift pattern, WPVI reported.

Boyce said the world has changed a lot while they've been at work.

'We've almost been the lucky ones, I'll say for the last 28 days because I haven't had to stand six feet from somebody. I haven't had to put a mask on,' he told WPVI. 

The plant, which is the largest polyolefins producer in America, makes 771 million pounds of polypropylene each year according to its website. 

Above, medical personnel learn how to remove PPE prior to the opening of the Baltimore Convention Center as a field hospital to assist with patients suffering from coronavirus

Workers in Texas and West Virginia also worked the live-in rotations.

In recent days it has emerged that the U.S government encouraged American companies to ship masks and PPE worth millions of dollars overseas to China, according to a report from the Washington Post.   

The paper said that the U.S. State Department announced it had shipped more than 17 tons of donated medical supplies to China in early February that front-line U.S. medical workers are now requesting as they battle the killer bug.  

Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat from Texas, told the Post: 'People right now, as we speak, are dying because there have been inadequate supplies of PPE.' 

The US has so far seen close to 800,000 Covid-19 cases and nearly 43,000 deaths.