Seattle isn’t feeling the Zika virus outbreak as directly as other places. The Aedes mosquito, Zika’s favored courier, doesn’t even fly around these parts. But as of this week, the world’s Zika crisis has begun to put critical pressure on the Pacific Northwest’s blood supply.
Puerto Rico has officially entered its own Zika crisis. The Centers for Disease and Control estimate that hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico will become infected, and cases of the virus are doubling weekly.
Puerto Rico is now Zika-infested. And under US rules, Puerto Rico’s residents can’t give blood.
"That pretty much shuts down blood collection in Puerto Rico until this has passed," Dr. Rebecca Haley, medical director of blood services at Bloodworks Northwest, said. "And I don’t know if this will pass."
In response to Puerto Rico’s emergency, blood centers in other parts of the country are stepping up to fill the gap. But the need is so great—a 3.5 million-person US territory now unable to provide blood to neighbors in need of organ transplants or other medical emergencies—that it’s taxing Bloodworks Northwest.
According to Dr. Haley, Bloodworks Northwest’s blood supply is now at critical levels, with just two days worth of blood on the shelf. Bloodworks sent 35 pints of red cells to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, and on Wednesday the organization sent a shipment of platelets. But with a late flu season in the Pacific Northwest and more people traveling to escape winter dreariness, fewer locals are able to donate blood.
On top of the existing crisis in Puerto Rico, Haley’s also concerned that the virus will spread to other parts of the United States, which would add even more pressure on safer regions’ blood supplies.
"Texas and Florida may join [Puerto Rico], because there have been a couple of cases reported there,” Haley told me. "If we get human-to-human transmission in the southeast United States, it will be declared a Zika-infested area."
Zika is also sexually transmitted. And for what it’s worth, Zika remains in semen longer than it remains in blood. One of the questions Bloodworks asks its female blood donors is whether they’ve recently had sex with men who have traveled to Zika-infested areas. (The FDA doesn’t currently allow blood donation centers to accept blood supplies from men who have sex with men—which is some discriminatory bullshit—but that’s going to change this year for male donors who have been celibate for a year.)
If you’re able to give blood, check out Bloodworks Northwest locations here. They’re in particular need of O negative and A negative.
