The blood supply management amid the COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

Due to the government's early intervention such as mass lockdown and curtailment strategies towards mass gatherings, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the organization of the voluntary blood donation camps have been suspended. It's most significant impact on the blood community has been a dramatic decrease in the number of blood donors. Therefore, our blood stock has almost dried up and put our inventory in a state of jeopardy. Additionally, all the elective surgeries and non-urgent clinical interventions have also been deferred during this time. This has led to a drop in the blood collection, demand as well as the issue at our blood center. With this backdrop, we intended to assess the effect of this mass lockdown on our blood supply management, particularly in two phases [phase-I prior to the outbreak] and phase-II [during the outbreak]. Transitioning back to the normal conditions would most likely depend on the extent and the time duration of this pandemic and associated behavioural change, which is foreseen to remain in effect well beyond the original estimates.

Keywords: Blood Management; Blood Transfusion Services; Coronavirus Infection; Pandemic; Voluntary Blood Donation.

Fig. 1

WB collections at voluntary blood donation camps [VBDCs] and in-house [IH] donations.

Fig. 2

Significant reduction in the demand, issue & OBDE of PRBC units during Phase-II.

Fig. 3

Comparison of the weekly issue of PRBC units during Phase-I and Phase-II.

Fig. 4

Lesser WB collection in the Phase-II led to a reduction in the number of OBDE units.