As the Covid-19 pandemic reduces donations and disrupts their staffing, the blood banks in the United States are reportedly running short of supplies with American Red Cross executive Chris Hrouda noting it’s the biggest challenge he has seen in his 30 years in the business.
Hrouda warns that the Red Cross – which accounts for about 40% of US blood supplies- is struggling to keep in inventory even one day’s worth of demand which is a far cry from the normally maintained three-day cushion.
Since blood components have a short shelf life, supplies have to be constantly refreshed and when supplies fall short of demand since blood is needed for surgeries and various medical procedures, patients must be prioritized according to the most critical needs.
Faced with the shortages, some hospitals have reportedly been forced to keep a tighter lid on their blood supplies and to also hold blood drives of their own while some hospitals, like Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, are recalibrating transfusions with fewer red blood cells to help preserve inventories, as its medical director Dr. Jennifer Andrews explains.
Social-distancing restrictions and remote work are part of the problem since many businesses and colleges have canceled their usual blood drives, but the testing process and the processing of the new donations also take several days so some hospitals were forced to defer patients from major surgery, including organ transplants, due to the dangerously low blood-supply levels.
Apart from the struggle to maintain adequate staffing in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic, Red Cross is also suffering its worst blood shortage in more than a decade so it was forced to feature a red banner on its website as an imminent warning.
On top of everything, the already thin inventories were stretched out additionally by the Dec. 10 tornado outbreak that has injured hundreds of people across parts of the central US.
There’s also the problem of the surging gun violence that America’s big cities like Philadelphia are experiencing and that is exacerbating the shortage, so a local church has recently tried to organize a blood drive for Jan. 8 to help meet the local supply need, but the drive is one step of being canceled considering that only six people had registered so far, while the minimum to keep the event from being canceled is 30.
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