Red Cross: Need For Blood Donation Is Urgent

There’s an urgent need for blood donations in Wisconsin, which experts credit to a drop in donations and increasing demand for blood.

Dr. Jerry Gottschall is the senior medical director at Versiti, which supplies 56 Wisconsin hospitals with blood. There was a surge in donations in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, but that supply has run low as blood can only be stored for 42 days.

“As our inventory shrunk down, our donations did not go back up,” he said. “And now hospitals have started to reopen.”

Many hospitals canceled elective surgeries and delayed other procedures earlier this year in order to preserve doctors, beds and other resources for those who need it most. At that time, the need for blood was low.

Now, as hospitals begin to offer these procedures again, Gottschall says the need for blood has gone up.

“The need is critical,” he said, adding that the level of inventory that Versiti uses to supply hospitals with blood is “at low levels that really we have almost never seen before.”

Usually, about half of the blood Versiti supplies comes from donation events at churches, businesses, schools and the like. More than 600 of those events were canceled this May and June, Gottschall said.

According to American Red Cross external communications manager Laura McGuire, the organization’s need for blood has gone up about 30 percent nationwide since hospitals began opening up more.

On June 15, the Red Cross began providing free COVID-19 antibody tests to all donors nationwide. They hope to continue this program through the end of the summer.

The Red Cross and Versiti require that donors, staff and volunteers wear masks during donations.

Wisconsinites can visit versiti.org/wisconsin or redcrossblood.org to find donation opportunities in their area.