EAST LANSING, Mich. — March is Red Cross Month, and the largest blood drive of the year will be Tuesday at the Breslin Center. The American Red Cross has once again partnered with Michigan State University Greek Life for its annual Greek Week blood drive. Last year's event had to be canceled due to COVID-19.
"With the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s really limited our ability to do a lot of the blood drives that we would normally do on campus,” said Tony Gerheiser, American Red Cross Account Manager for the East Lansing community.
In a normal year, the event would bring in around 300 donors. This year there are 200 registered donors with 25 available left.
“We’re going to collect as much blood as humanly possible. This is a lot different than what we look at doing with our normal challenges, because say, we would do 1,000 units over a two-month period, but we’re collecting 20 percent of that in just one day,” Gerheiser said.
Registration was opened to the public this weekend, and there are only 25 appointments left. Walk-ins will not be accepted for many reasons, one being the extensive sanitary measures that will need to be taken between each appointment.
"We’re wiping down every single thing that the donor touches – chair, if they touch a pen we’re wiping the pen, you know, we’re wiping the computers, we’re wiping the keyboards, we’re wiping the chairs – we’re wiping every single thing down that we possibly can to mitigate the risk of COVID-19,” Gerheiser said.
Gerheiser wanted to remind everyone that there will be more drives throughout the year, so if you can't make it to this one, follow along on RedCrossBlood.org to see when the next one in your area will be.
You can schedule a blood donation appointment by:
- downloading the Red Cross Blood Donor App and entering sponsor code: MSUGreekLife,
- visiting RedCrossBlood.org,
- calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767)
- or enabling the Blood Donor Skill on any Alexa Echo device.
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