Although COVID-19 patients don’t need blood to help them get better, a lot of people need blood and organ transplants to save their lives.
It has become difficult for blood donation stations to keep their reserves full if only 10 people are allowed to donate at a time.
If you’re not sick and if you can, donate blood and register to find an organ donor match.
Donate Bone Marrow
Registering from home to help someone needing an organ is easy. All you have to do is go online to bethematch.org to register, order a kit for your sample, then mail the kit back with your sample and hope to be someone’s match.
Donors will be screened for any COVID-19 exposure.
If you are between the ages of 18 and 44, patients especially need you. Research shows that cells from younger donors lead to more successful transplants. Doctors request donors in the 18-44 age group 86 percent of the time.
At donor registry drives, the focus is on adding registry members most likely to donate. Donors receive a $100 tax-deductible payment to cover the cost.
If you are a biracial person, consider donating because patients have less than a 14 percent chance of finding a match. A four-time cancer survivor Lizzie Tennyson is in need of a bone marrow transplant, as she enters her 5th round of cancer at age 21. It’s extremely difficult for her to find a match as a biracial woman.
Donate Blood
Blood donation centers request advance appointments, as they are no longer taking walk-ins to reduce the number of people within a space.
After making an appointment, the center staff will check your temperature and if the donor is below 100 degrees, the staff will ask a series of COVID-19 questions.
They will ask if you have a shortness of breath, consistent cough, flu-like symptoms not related to allergies, sore throat or a fever in the last 24 hours.
If you answer yes to any of those questions, you will be turned away.
