Blood supply management amidst COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Aims & Objectives: we intend to assess the effect of this mass lockdown on our blood supply management in two phases [phase-I prior to the outbreak] and phase-II[during the outbreak]. Patients/Materials & Methods: This is a retrospective study of twelve months of a blood bank supplying to a multi-specialty tertiary care academic hospital in Lucknow. The study was divided into two phases namely • Phase-I pre-pandemic phase [Oct'19 to Feb'20] • Phase-II the full-blown pandemic phase [Mar 20-sept 20] Results: The whole blood (WB) collected in phase I and phase II were 5517 and 5379 respectively. In Phase I 27 VBDC collected 1153 units i.e. 69% whereas in Phase II only 2 VBDC collected 93 units making it only 6.5% to total collection. The OBDE units in phase I were 218 i.e. 10.9% while in phase II 321 i.e. 23% were discarded. The PRBC demand in phase I was around 296/month for 5 months and was reduced to 284/month in 7 months.Exclusive supply to covid patients in last 5 months were 69units. Discussion & Conclusion: In phase I the WB collected was more and the discarded units were less as compared to phase II. The overall collection was reduced in phase II including the monthly demand of PRBC.With little insight of the disease and everyday learning, by motivating more voluntary donors and health care workers the efficient chain of blood supply and demand can be maintained as the virus is to stay with us for a long time.