Anti-vaxxers are refusing blood transfusions from vaccinated donors because they believe they're 'tainted,' report says
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- COVID skeptics are refusing transfusions from vaccinated donors, The Daily Beast reported.
- Doctors estimate up to 70% of the blood currently being donated is coming from vaccinated donors.
- Blood centers don't retain data on whether donors have been vaccinated against the virus or not.
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Some patients who are skeptical of the coronavirus jab are refusing life-saving blood transfusions from vaccinated donors, according to a report by The Daily Beast.
The American Red Cross said that their officials have had to field questions in recent weeks about whether vaccinated blood could be "tainted" with components from the COVID-19 injections, according to spokesperson Emily Osment.
Doctors have had to explain that it is safe to receive a blood donation from a vaccinated person.
"While the antibodies that are produced by the stimulated immune system in response to vaccination are found throughout the bloodstream, the actual vaccine components are not," Jessa Merrill, the Red Cross director of biomedical communications, told The Daily Beast.
Other blood centers across the country are reporting similar conversations with patients.
Dr. Louis Katz, chief medical officer for ImpactLife, a blood center in Iowa, said he's had to tell "a small handful" of patients that it is not possible to give them blood from unvaccinated donors.
Dr. Geeta Paranjape, a medical director at Carter BloodCare in Bedford, Texas, also had to intervene after a father of a boy who was scheduled to have surgery had asked whether his son could get blood from unvaccinated donors.
"A lot of people think there's some kind of microchip or they're going to be cloned," Paranjape said, according to The Daily Beast.
Up to 70% of the country's blood supply is now coming from donors who have either already received the vaccine or have had COVID-19, experts said.
Dr. Michael Busch, director of the Vitalant Research Institute, who is monitoring antibody levels in samples from the US blood supply, told the Beast: "Less than 10% of the blood we collect does not have antibodies."
On top of this, blood centers don't collect data about whether blood donors have been infected with or are vaccinated against COVID-19.
Donors are asked to wait either seven or 28 days from their vaccination before donating as a precautionary measure so that side effects from vaccination are not confused with post-donation illness, Reuters reported.
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