Vaccinated against Covid, can I donate blood?

Like millions of French people, you may be used to donating blood. A generous act that can save lives and helps countless patients every year. As the Covid-19 epidemic continues and the vaccination campaign accelerates, legitimate questions emerge. Should we continue to donate blood? Should being vaccinated dissuade me?

On social networks, Internet users recently relayed warning messages. These latter indicate that the Japanese Red Cross would now ask vaccinated citizens not to donate blood. For opponents of vaccines, this is a signal calling for distrust, proving in their eyes the potential dangerousness of the injections carried out in the fight against Covid-19. When looking at the measures actually taken in the archipelago, however, we see that these statements are misleading: in France as in Japan, donating blood remains entirely possible for people who have been vaccinated.

To verify these claims, head to the Japanese site of the Red Cross. On February 22, he specified what “the criteria for accepting blood donation for those who have been vaccinated” were being studied in the country. Pending greater visibility, the decision to suspend donations has been taken. However, the situation has changed since: the NGO highlighted now that vaccinated donors will be able to attend “from May 14”. All they have to do is make sure that “48 hours have passed” since the injection.

If this date may seem very late, it should be noted that the vaccination campaign has hardly started in Japan. Less than 1% of the population is now fully immunized, a delay which can be explained in particular by the extreme caution of the authorities. Any new drug or vaccine, before being authorized in the archipelago, must indeed be subjected to additional clinical trials on Japanese soil, which logically delays their large-scale distribution. It should also be noted that for the time being, Japan has concentrated its orders from the Pfizer laboratory alone, and that it is therefore very dependent on its deliveries. Either way, ensuring that blood donation is prohibited for vaccinated people is misleading. In fact, only a few donors have been prevented from doing so, given the very low number of vaccinated inhabitants.

What about in France? Started much earlier, the vaccination campaign forced the health authorities to consider what to do. The High Council for Public Health, in mid-February, “have taken into consideration the nature and modes of action of these vaccines, as well as the need for an adequate supply of blood products and other products of the human body”, a recommended that there is “no exclusion, even temporary, of donors who have received a messenger RNA and non-replicating vector vaccine authorized in the European Union (EU)”. He also urged “Respect as a precaution a temporary exclusion from donation of four weeks, for vaccinated donors from countries outside the EU”.

Since then, other vaccines (not just RNA) have been authorized, but the instructions remain the same. The French Blood Establishment insists on the fact that he remains “possible to donate blood after an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine, without any postponement period to be observed”. Indeed, “It is only in cases of vaccination abroad or as part of a vaccine trial that a deadline must be observed before giving blood”. Note that for other vaccines, it is sometimes necessary to wait, this is the case with those against BCG, yellow fever, measles, rubella and mumps which require compliance with a period of four weeks before any donation.

Vaccinated donors are not always greeted with caution, on the contrary. The site “vaccination info service” remember that in “In case of vaccination of less than two years against hepatitis B or tetanus, blood donation is particularly recommended in order to produce blood products with protective properties, due to the presence of antibodies”. Remember that in France, the care of the sick requires the equivalent of nearly 10,000 blood donations each day.

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