Blood donor characteristics and blood safety before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A BEST Collaborative international survey.

Background and objectives: Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, blood suppliers faced unique challenges meeting changing demand while maintaining safety for donors, recipients and staff. Actions taken may have altered the composition of the donor base and the frequency of confirmed-positive infectious disease marker (IDM) rates. No studies have evaluated the impact of the pandemic on donations, donor demographics and blood safety across several countries.

Materials and methods: Whole blood/red blood cell (RBC) donors and donations and confirmed IDM reactivity recorded during from 11 March 2019 to 11 September 2019 ("pre-pandemic period") and from 11 March 2020 to 11 September 2020 ("pandemic period") were collected by 11 blood services participating in the Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion (BEST) Collaborative.

Results: Eleven blood services from nine countries reported on over 4 million donations per period. On average, donations dropped by 4.0% between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods, driven by fewer donations from active repeat donors (-5.6%) and first-time [FT] donors (-14.0%) but partially offset by more donations from lapsed donors (+15.7%). The decline was also driven by fewer donations from male donors (-7.6%) and younger donors (i.e., 16-25 years: -19.0%). Overall, the rate of confirmed IDM positivity dropped from 100.0 to 88.6 per 100,000 donors (-11.4%) between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods.

Conclusion: Early in the pandemic, blood donations, particularly from FT donors, decreased. In future respiratory virus pandemics, blood banks should anticipate changes in demand, collection site locations and capacity and donor behaviour. Unlike results in acute catastrophes, lower rates of confirmed IDM positivity were observed, in part related to lower numbers of FT, male and younger donors.