Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on blood transfusion service: an experience from a regional blood transfusion center

The unforeseen and uncertain life-threatening situation of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected all areas of the human daily work schedule. This study was designed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on blood transfusion services and discuss the adopted confrontation measures for uninterrupted blood supply during the pandemic situation. The data on blood donation, blood component preparation, and issue from January 2019 to December 2022 were collected from the inventory registers of the RBTC, Delhi, India. Compared to the non-pandemic year 2019, during the year 2020, all variables decreased gradually. The observed maximum decrease in variables such as blood collection (–79.16%) in the month of October, blood issue (–71.61%) in the month of August, random donor platelets (RDP) preparation (–98.09%) in the month of October, RDP issue (–86.08%) in the month of September, fresh frozen plasma (FFP) preparation (–100%) in the month of October, and FFP issue (–96.08%) in the month of July with an annual decrease of –45.52%, –42.87%, –33.00%, –59.79%, –40.98%, and –54.48%, respectively, as compared to year 2019. Compared to year 2020, in year 2021, the annual increase in blood collection, blood issue, FFP preparation, FFP issue, RDP preparation, and RDP issue was +50.20%, +21.68%, +65.31%, +78.52%, +116.23%, and +213.30%, respectively. Our study results show that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected blood transfusion services at our blood bank. The adopted coping strategies to maintain the safe and uninterrupted blood transfusion chain at our blood bank gave us lessons for future preparedness if faced with a similar situation.