"Because Every Drop Counts": Blood donation during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has trampled the health care system of many countries [1]. Blood transfusion services (BTS) in any hospital, hold the prime location and ensure smooth functioning of all elective and urgent surgical interventions of various traumas, emergency, obstetric cases, and the cancer patients throughout 24 × 7. In the wake of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, just like many other sectors of the health care system, BTS and blood banks are also struggling to cope up with the unforeseen challenges. 1.1. Impact of Social distancing on blood donation drives One of the major challenges ahead of us is to maintain high spirits and persistent motivation amongst the volunteer donors to keep donating blood, even during the crisis of COVID-19 pandemic which is a war-like situation. To et al. in their study found that fewer than 5% of Americans who are eligible to donate have donated blood [2]. These figures have likely worsened further during the current COVID-19 pandemic period. We believe that there might be lots of concerns, confusion, and misleading rumors in the mind of donors with regards to blood donation during the pandemic period. Additionally, due to the government's interventions such as home sheltering, mass lockdown, and curtailment strategies towards public gatherings, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the arrangement of the voluntary blood donation drives have been debarred. Likewise, there has been a general reluctance of the public to come to the blood centers to donate blood. This has contributed to a significant drop in the number of blood drives and storage inventory. The phenomenon of the drop in voluntary donation has been noted in many countries across the globe [3], [4]. Yahia et al. recently published their eight months (from September 2019 to May 2020) experience with blood supply and demand in King Abdullah Hospital, Bisha, Saudi Arabia. They noted a significant drop of 39.5% in blood bank-based collections. At the same time, they also noted a drop in blood demand by 21.7% [3]. Wang et al. reported a similar experience from The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China [4]. They reported that the major concern of the blood donors in their study was the fear of acquiring SARS-COv-2 during blood donation.