The American Red Cross is facing a severe blood shortage because of blood drive cancellations prompted by the coronavirus outbreak.
As the coronavirus pandemic has grown here in the U.S., blood drive cancellations have grown at an alarming rate. To date, nearly 2,700 Red Cross blood drives have been canceled across the country.
More than 80 percent of the blood the Red Cross collects comes from drives held at locations of this type.
Healthy individuals are needed now to donate blood.
Individuals can schedule an appointment to give blood with the Red Cross by visiting RedCrossBlood.org, using the Red Cross Blood Donor App, calling 1-800-RED-CROSS or enabling the Blood Donor Skill on any Alexa Echo device.
The Red Cross is adding appointment slots at donation centers and expanding capacity at many community blood drives across the country over the next few weeks to ensure ample opportunities for donors to give.
The Red Cross expects the number of cancellations to continue to increase, which is causing heightened concern for blood collection organizations and hospitals across the country.
“I am looking at the refrigerator that contains only one day’s supply of blood for the hospital,” said Dr. Robertson Davenport, director of transfusion medicine at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor. “The hospital is full. There are patients who need blood and cannot wait.”
The Red Cross is committed to blood drive safety. New measures have been implemented to ensure blood drives and donation centers are even safer for our donors and staff, including:
• Checking the temperature of staff and donors before entering a drive to make sure they are healthy
• Spacing beds, where possible, to follow social distancing practices between blood donors
• Increasing enhanced disinfecting of surfaces and equipment
According to the Red Cross, there is no data or evidence that this coronavirus can be transmitted by blood transfusion, and there have been no reported cases of transfusion transmission for any respiratory virus including this coronavirus worldwide.
