Blood supplies are critically low now
Relentless snow hinders donations in area
An ordinary winter is tough enough when it comes to maintaining the blood supply. Bad weather and seasonal illnesses depress the turnout of people willing to give a lifesaving pint.
As with all things, the coronavirus pandemic is making it worse. The major blood donation agencies, the Miller-Keystone Blood Center and American Red Cross, are on red alert as blood supplies have dipped to alarming lows. At Miller-Keystone, the blood type most in demand by hospitals, O negative, is nearly depleted. So is B negative.
The main problem is that pandemic restrictions have largely put an end to the blood donation events that help Miller-Keystone, the Lehigh Valley’s major supplier, meet demand through the year.
“High schools and colleges have been the source of 15% of collections, and we have virtually no access anymore,” said Dr. Kip Kuttner, the center’s vice president and medical director. “We have work-from-home so we can’t go to businesses and collect blood. There’s just all sorts of things that prevent people from aggregating in one spot.”
The weather’s not helping, either. This is shaping up to be the snowiest February on record in the Lehigh Valley, and Thursday’s snowstorm kept people away from donation sites again.
Keeping blood flowing to the area’s hospitals — not only in the Lehigh Valley, but in Berks, Bucks,
Luzerne and Montour counties and northwest New Jersey — is a tough task in the best of times, because while supplies may be disrupted, demand never ends.
For example, hospitals want 10 of every 100 units to be O negative. Kuttner said the center has to draw from 100 people just to get six units of O negative, based on the distribution of blood types in the population.
The center also supplies platelets, the cells that help blood clot. They are essential for patients who experience hemorrhaging or undergo chemotherapy and other procedures that disrupt the clotting process.
Unlike whole blood donations, which take 15 minutes or so, platelet donations take up to two hours, because the blood has to go through a machine that separates the platelets from other cells. Even willing donors don’t always have that kind of time.
At Lehigh Valley Health Network, about 85% of the blood supply comes from Miller-Keystone. The remainder comes from the Red Cross. The network is tracking the shortage but hasn’t had to curtail any procedures because of it, said Dr. Matthew McCambridge, LVHN’s chief quality and patient safety officer.
At one time, that might not have been the case. McCambridge said researchers determined about a decade ago that patients needed less transfused blood than they were typically given. The change — McCambridge called it “mindful transfusion” — has helped hospitals reduce pressure on the blood supply and navigate shortages.
Had the pandemic shortage hit before transfusion practices changed, “this would have been a different conversation,” McCambridge said.
Even so, the network remains vigilant about the supply, communicating several times a week with Miller-Keystone and the Red Cross and reminding doctors to use best practices.
St. Luke’s University Health Network gets all its blood from Miller-Keystone, and does what it can to keep the supply up, said Julie Reimer, a laboratory account manager who serves as the network’s liaison to the blood center.
“Our campuses host blood drives at least quarterly and emergency drives whenever they need it,” she said. “We’ve email-blasted our employees and asked them to go to Miller’s fixed sites to donate. Health care workers are very motivated and understand the situation.”
Early in the pandemic, officials were concerned that hospitals would be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, so they canceled elective surgeries and reserved the blood supply for emergencies. That helped to offset the loss of donation drives, but once hospitals recognized they could manage caseloads, electives restarted and demand grew again.
In a worst-case scenario, Miller-Keystone could ask for help from cooperating blood donation agencies in other states, but a glance at the news shakes confidence in that option.
“The Midwest is slammed with their problems, the Northwest has theirs, the South has theirs,” Kuttner said, noting the ice storms, polar plunges and power outages afflicting the country at the moment.
Miller-Keystone has taken to traditional and social media to spread word about the need and is encouraging potential donors to make an appointment at one of the center’s 13 sites. Marketing Manager Holly Yacynych said all COVID-19 safety protocols are followed.
“Our staff, even before the pandemic, always use [personal protective equipment] and everything the blood touches is sterile,” she said. “We sanitize all high-touch areas, and since you must be healthy and your temperature is checked at the door, your risk of contracting the virus is relatively low.”
Donation, incidentally, might be one of the keys to beating back the pandemic. Kuttner said people who have had the coronavirus and recovered can donate plasma, which contains the antibodies against the illness and may help patients recover.
Laying aside pandemic and weather and all the other roadblocks, blood donation is often seen as a hard sell. Nobody really likes needles, after all. But Reimer, who has been helping arrange blood drives at St. Luke’s for four years, said many people would happily sit for the procedure.
“I think that a lot of people aren’t asked, and if you just ask, they will say yes,” she said. “It’s only 30 minutes, and my understanding is that one pint can save three lives.”