With the need for blood donations increasing, the American Red Cross has created an incentive to get people to give – all blood, plasma and platelet donations will be tested for COVID-19 antibodies. These tests, however, are not for the comfort of hospitals or the Red Cross. They are for the donors.
In the past two to three months, the Red Cross has canceled thousands of blood drives across the country, leading to hundreds of thousands of potential donations lost.
“To give you an idea of how that affects us, just to keep equal with the demand of the hospitals that we work with, we really have to collect about 13,000 blood donations every day,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Mary Brant said.
Until two weeks ago, the Red Cross was still able to meet the hospitals’ needs. However, with cities reopening around the country, the demand rises.
“We were able to meet the immediate needs of hospitals because they hadn’t been doing elective surgeries,” Brant said. But now that hospitals have reopened and have started to normalize, the Red Cross finds itself running low on blood.
In the past two weeks, the Red Cross saw a 30% increase in requests for blood products, according to Brant.
This extreme deficit has caused the Red Cross to look to the public for more donations.
“There is only one source of blood, and that’s a healthy volunteer,” Brant said.
To motivate the public to want to donate, the Red Cross is providing COVID-19 antibody testing for all blood product donations.
Antibodies are proteins in blood that are created to combat pathogens like viruses, and can help fight future attacks. Scientific studies have shown that people infected with the coronavirus produce antibodies to the virus within 2-3 weeks.
Knowing whether the donated blood has COVID-19 antibodies won’t impact the donation. Antibodies are just the response to the virus, not coronavirus itself. Additionally, an antibody test is different than a diagnostic test. A diagnostic test determines whether the patient has COVID-19 presently. An antibody test determines whether a patient has been exposed to COVID-19, thus developing antibodies.
Although the Red Cross is trying to incentivise donations, Brant said that the motivation behind the testing is altruistic.
The Red Cross, which is an “organization dedicated to helping others,” was in a position to help alleviate stress during the pandemic, Brant said. Providing this incentive to collect more blood not only helps thousands of lives, but also gives donors something back.
“The reason the Red Cross did this is that we recognize that individuals, as well as public health organizations, were looking for more information about COVID-19,” Brant said.
This information has the potential to help everyone “try to get a handle on how widespread exposure has been,” Brant said.
Still, Brant emphasized the importance of donating blood, even without a pandemic.
“The need for blood is constant. … It’s really important all the time,” she said. “It truly is one of the most selfless acts that there are.”
The Red Cross has also changed it’s policies to ensure safety as the need for blood increases. Before the pandemic, “it was very common for us to tell people ‘If you have an hour, come on down. Come to a blood drive and donate.’ But we simply cannot do that as much anymore,” Brant said.
To donate blood, the Red Cross has implemented a by-appointment-only policy. Brant said that this is to ensure the safety of the donors and the volunteers.
“We had a very challenging time of not only making sure that donors felt safe enough to come out and donate, but also to replace blood drives that were canceled on a daily basis,” Brant said.
The solution is the Red Cross’ blood drive locator. By typing in your ZIP code at RedCrossBlood.org, you can schedule an appointment at a blood drive near you .
With no known end date to the pandemic, Brant urges all healthy people to safely donate every eight weeks.
“I would just encourage people to remember that we will need their help for many weeks and months to come. Please make time to donate.”
To learn more about antibody testing or schedule a donation, visit redcrossblood.org.