Canadian Blood Services (CBS) has only O+ and O- blood types available for three days, along with only five days of A+, A- and B- blood types as of Friday, according to its website.
The agency says donations become “especially needed” when the supply of these blood types falls below eight days.
In June, CBS said it had reached its smallest donor base in a decade and is struggling to replenish a critically low national supply since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Since July 1, collections have been steadily declining,” CBS said in a statement emailed to CTVNews.ca on Friday.
The agency announced in July that it needed to fill 57,000 donation appointment slots by the end of August, shortly after facing backlash that month for scrapping its mandatory face mask policy.
The move prompted some donors to say they were considering canceling or delaying upcoming meetings.
“Based on our current appointment bookings, we anticipate falling short of our collection goal of 3,000 units next week,” CBS said in the email. “This represents a 17 percent drop in the national inventory of blood products.”
CBS attributes the drop in donations to a drop in availability for potential donors.
“People across Canada are enjoying a return to pre-pandemic activities and summer travel, leaving less time for donations,” CBS said.
Additionally, CBS currently does not accept donations from gay and bisexual men, and certain other people in the LGBTQ2S+ community, unless they have been abstinent for three months.
Although Health Canada allowed CBS to withdraw from the blanket ban in April, the national blood donor organization has not yet moved to screen all donors based on riskier sexual behavior, regardless of gender or sexuality.
The agency says it plans to roll out the new behavior-based questionnaire approach “no later than” Sept. 30.
The US also has an ongoing blood shortage crisis. The American Red Cross announced in January that it was facing its worst blood shortage in more than a decade amid a surge in Omicron cases leading to a “low number of donors,” the agency said.
“While some types of medical care can wait, others cannot,” Dr. Pampe Young, chief medical officer of the Red Cross, said in a news release at the time.
“We are doing everything we can to increase blood donations to ensure that every patient can receive medical treatment without delay, but we cannot do it without more donors.”
According to Red Cross Blood Services, there is a one-year shelf life for frozen plasma, a 42-day shelf life for red blood cells and a five-day shelf life for platelets for donation.
CBS says there are 57,000 open appointments to be filled before the end of August across Canada.
Anyone wishing to donate blood at CBS is asked to make an appointment on their website.
“It is important to remember that the need for blood, plasma and platelets is constant,” CBS said in the email. “Cancer patients, accident and trauma victims, people undergoing surgery and people with blood disorders rely on transfusions of blood, platelets and plasma every day.”
With files from The Canadian Press
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