The organization said urgent donors are needed and urged healthy and eligible donors to make an appointment by visiting RedCrossBlood.org or by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS.
Potential donors who have traveled to China, Hong Kong, Macau, Italy, Iran and South Korea are requested to delay their donation for 28 days, as well as those who have been shown to have COVID-19 or have been in contact with a suspected case of the virus.
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Throughout the week, governors across the country echoed the Red Cross’s concerns and called on healthy citizens to satisfy the wishes of their own communities.
On Thursday, U.S. surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams asked Americans to donate blood. “It will help your country and your network in this crisis and may even save a life,” Adams said. Although there are rules of social distance, he noted that for those who are healthy, donating blood is a valid explanation for venturing away from home, especially with the greatest precautions that donation centers are taking lately.
“Social estrangement necessarily means social disengagement,” the surgeon general explained.
In Maine, Red Cross account manager David Stires is generally guilty of about 25 blood donation campaigns per month, but tells Fox News that he is now struggling to locate new places and sites for cell blood donations, after cancellations in his area.
As one of the state’s six account managers, the Stires region covers the capital, Augusta. Stires said that, in general, the best schools in the domain run blood donation campaigns in the spring, but because local schools are completely closed or closed to events, blood donation campaigns are now also canceled.
On Thursday, he hosted an occasion at the YMCA in the Boothbay area, but had to make other plans when he announced that the YMCA would close due to coronavirus. Stires was able to temporarily draw up a new game plan to facilitate the more than 30 appointments with regular donors that had been scheduled.
The old construction of the City Council and Stires could warn donors on time. It also alerted the National Call Center and the Red Cross online page so that interested donors can locate the nearest and most convenient location in their zip code.
Boothbay resident Eve Jamieson spoke to Fox News just after donating blood Thursday. She calls herself a “great traveler,” a normal blood donor she encouraged as a little girl, accompanying her mother while donating blood. Jamieson herself began donating to college and now brings her own children when she donates blood. They like cookies, he explained.
“I see it as a civic duty, a bit like voting,” Jamieson said, “something everyone does.”
At first, she was worried about blood donation, but said her mother reminded her that “the more you give, the more you receive.”
“I strongly encourage everyone to do as much as possible,” Jamieson said. “In less than 2 hours, I potentially stored the lives of five people, and all I did was lie down and get cookies. There’s no explanation why not.
Of his six children, he said the two eldest had already donated blood since the start of the pandemic in the United States. Jamieson and Stires noted that O-type blood donors, referred to as “universal donors,” are the most in-demand. Blood O allows nurses, in case of trauma or emergency, to supply blood to a patient of any blood type.
Jamieson says Lincoln County, where Boothbay is located, is home to Maine’s oldest population. Considering that Maine is the state with the oldest population in the United States, the desire to serve its aging population is still present.
Additional precautions have been taken, Stires said, to protect Red Cross personnel with red-blooded bushes and donors. In addition to the same juice and cookies as usual, temperatures and disinfectant will be taken in abundance. Jamieson said he had had his temperature taken twice and that the seats in the waiting room were also separated.
The blood donation campaign was able to collect donations from 33 donors Thursday on Boothbay, collecting about 31 sets of blood, equivalent to about 31 pints. The organization said its goal, founded on the last 3 blood donation campaigns in the city, 29 sets, beat its target even in difficult circumstances. Stires said they had to prioritize pre-booked appointments and make as many appointments as possible, but that they had to reject some.
Jamieson emphatically recommended that other donors “use the Red Cross donor app to save time and schedule their appointments in advance, rather than entering.” He also warned that donors use “warm, fluffy diapers,” saying that the blankets the Red Cross usually has are not allowed during the pandemic, due to fitness problems.
“Desire is constant,” Smoo, Stires, a former phlebotomist. “Car accidents, high-risk pregnancies and cancer do not prevent due to coronavirus.”
The current source is the only problem. Stires is also involved in the persistent need.
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“Red blood cells only last 42 days in a refrigerator, there’s a constant need for blood,” he added. “Cancer patients want platelets to fight, and they only last five days.”