Fears over coronavirus begin to reduce blood donations in the Carolinas
The coronavirus is beginning to reduce the number of people who are donating blood in the Carolinas and nationwide, raising concerns about the blood supply as the virus spreads across the country.
The American Red Cross and The Blood Connection, two agencies that collect blood in North and South Carolina, say giving blood is safe and are encouraging healthy people to make up for the expected loss of corporate blood drives and individual donations in the weeks ahead.
Five Blood Connection drives have already been canceled because sponsors are encouraging their employees to work at home, said Brian Lewis, the agency’s Eastern North Carolina donor resources manager. Those five drives mean the loss of an estimated 100 units of whole blood, Lewis said, and walk-in traffic at its donation center on Glenwood Avenue is also down.
“People are just super cautious about coming out and interacting with people,” he said.
As of Tuesday, donations at The Blood Connection were down 20% across the Carolinas since Friday, with eight canceled drives that were expected to bring in 252 pints, according to spokeswoman Allie Van Dyke.
“That’s 250+ units we now have to collect from somewhere else this week,” Van Dyke wrote in an email.
The Red Cross reports 28 blood drives canceled nationwide as of Monday, though none in North Carolina yet, said spokeswoman Maya Franklin. But as more employers keep workers at home and people worry about coming in contact with strangers, blood donations will suffer, Franklin said.
“We do anticipate there will be fewer people giving in the weeks to come,” she said. “People in general are just concerned about their health and want to take a lot of precautions to make sure they don’t get sick themselves and that their family and their loved ones also don’t get sick.”
No COVID-19 cases linked to blood
As of Monday evening, more than 660 people had tested positive for the coronavirus in the United States, according to The New York Times, and 26 people with the virus had died, 22 of them in the state of Washington. Seven cases have now been announced in North Carolina, all in the Triangle, and each one contracted the virus elsewhere, according to state health officials.
The Food and Drug Administration said in early February that the potential transmission of COVID-19 through blood transfusions “is unknown at this time.”
“However,” the agency added, “respiratory viruses, in general, are not known to be transmitted by blood transfusion, and there have been no reported case of transfusion-transmitted coronavirus.”
That hasn’t changed, according to America’s Blood Centers, an industry trade group. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention haven’t recommended blood donation centers change their operations because of coronavirus, according to the group.
Both The Red Cross and The Blood Connection ask potential donors where they have traveled in the previous three years and screen for those who have visited places known to have diseases such as malaria, Ebola and the Zika virus. The Red Cross is now asking people to put off donating blood for 28 days if they have been in contact with someone with coronavirus or visited four countries with COVID-19 outbreaks: Italy, South Korea, Iran and China, including Hong Kong and Macau.
And, as always, both agencies discourage people from donating if they are sick.
“We’re making sure people feel well,” Lewis said. “If somebody is not feeling well, we ask them to take some time and get into better physical shape before donating.”
For more information about donating blood, go to thebloodconnection.org or www.redcrossblood.org.
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Fears over coronavirus begin to reduce blood donations in the Carolinas."
