Minnesota leaders urge donations as state hits 10-year blood supply shortage

ST. PAUL — Blood donation leaders and health experts from around the state on Monday, Jan. 3, urged Minnesotans to consider donating to help alleviate a COVID-19 pandemic-driven blood supply shortage.

Donation levels typically allow blood banks to get supplies to hospitals that can then supply about three to five days' worth of blood on hand, the officials said, but lower-than-normal contributions forced those levels to about one day's worth of supplies. And that represented a roughly 10-year low for the state's blood supply levels.

“I’ve been here for 24 years and this is like the longest most heartwrenching difficulty we’ve ever faced as far as a blood shortage,” Angela Engblom, Northland component services manager for Memorial Blood Centers in Duluth, said during a virtual roundtable discussion. “It just keeps going on and on and on to the point that I don’t know if it’s actually ever going to end.”

https://www.brainerddispatch.com/newsmd/health-news/7338480-Minnesota-leaders-urge-donations-as-state-hits-10-year-blood-supply-shortage