Some U.S. blood centers have only a one-day supply<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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WEDNESDAY, July 7, 2021 (Healthday News) — Demand for blood is up 10 percent in the United States, and some U.S hospitals are postponing surgeries due to shortages.<\/p>\n
Experts say the situation is a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News<\/em> reported. Before COVID-19 shutdowns, schools accounted for 25 percent of collected blood.<\/p>\n NYU Langone Health in New York City came close to delaying scheduled surgeries, surgeon-in-chief Paresh Shah, M.D., said. “There’s this huge backlog of operations that really needed to get done,” Shah told CBS News<\/em>. “We were down to such a low inventory of blood that if we had one major transfusion event, we would have been depleted completely.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “It’s a 24\/7 operation,” Susan Forbes of OneBlood told CBS News<\/em>. “The donors are not in the traditional locations anymore. We lost large corporations, religious organizations, movie theater drives, festivals that were taking place ended.”<\/p>\n