Demand for blood is up 10% in the United States, and some U.S hospitals are postponing surgeries due to shortages.
Experts say the situation is a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News reported. Before COVID-19 shutdowns, schools accounted for 25% of collected blood.
NYU Langone Health in New York City came close to delaying scheduled surgeries, surgeon-in-chief Dr. Paresh Shah said.
“There’s this huge backlog of operations that really needed to get done,” Shah told CBS News. “We were down to such a low inventory of blood that if we had one major transfusion event, we would have been depleted completely.”
Some U.S. blood centers have only a one-day supply. OneBlood, the Southeast’s largest blood center, is struggling to deal with the blood shortage.
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