U.S. Blood Supplies Are Very Low. How Does That Affect El Paso?

The blood supply in the U.S. have been struggling for quite a bit in the last few years & the pandemic has definitely NOT helped at all. This year though, the amount of blood donations has reached an all time low across the country & the Red Cross needs our help.

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When I looked at my inbox this afternoon, I received an email from Vitalant saying “Blood Supply Decimated”. Confused, I decided to look to see how bad the blood supply in El Paso was. In an article with the El Paso Times, "the U.S. blood supply drops to one of its lowest levels in more than a decade". The reason being has the a combination of things, but the main reason why the amount of blood donations have reached "dangerously" low levels have been due to the winter storms & the amount of COVID cases rising.

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So how does this affect El Paso? Well for us, winter storms are not REALLY a factor but COVID is. At the time of writing this article, the EP Strong website consistently posts the amount of COVID cases in El Paso. Right now there are up to 209,716 positive cases (you can keep track on the number of cases right HERE). Because of the low amount of blood donators, The El Paso Blood Drive nearly had a day & a half's worth of blood left.

"People stopped donating because they have the virus, their family has the virus, we can’t go into businesses, blood drives are canceling" - Carla Alexander, communications manager for the South Division of Vitalant.

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And this doesn't just affect anyone with COVID. ANYONE who suffered an injury (maybe a broken bone, or suffered a deep cut & lost around a lot of blood), or someone who needs an blood transfusion... if the blood levels are low, it can easily slow down the road to recovery for them & can affect anyone who DOESN'T have the virus.

So if you're healthy & you want to donate to help the blood supply in El Paso to help out your fellow El Pasoan, you can go to a myriad of places to give blood: