BLOOD SUPPLY ANALYSIS DURING PANDEMIC IN INDONESIAN RED CROSS OF SEMARANG CITY

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affected healthcare facilities globally. The current condition was a formidable challenge to maintaining blood supply in a blood center. This retrospective cross-sectional study analyzed the impact of COVID-19 Enforcement of Limitation on Community Activities on blood supply management in The Indonesian Red Cross Blood Center in Semarang City. Blood supply management consists of blood collection and receiving blood requests. Our study used secondary data from a blood donor and blood request reports from January to December 2018 and January 2021 to December 2021. Statistical analysis was done by comparing 2018 and 2021 data with an independent t-test. Our findings showed that implementing COVID-19 regulations severely impacted outdoor blood collection in Semarang City. The impact spanned the period of May to August 2021, especially in July 2021 (emergency enforcement of limitation on community activities) when the blood collection decreased by 68% (1,352 units) from the previous month. The amount of in-house blood collection was also found to have been sustained by the regulation impact because of blood recognition events from May until August 2021. The research also found that there was a significant decrease in outdoor blood donors, blood supplies, and blood demand between 2018 and 2021 (p<0.05). These findings were due to the amount of outdoor blood collection that was heavily dependent on unforeseen external situations such as a pandemic, a timely mitigation strategy was warranted to sustain blood supply.