Day: November 20, 2022

U.S. Army veteran Matt Schermerhorn couldn’t give blood for years because he was stationed in Europe during a deadly mad cow disease scare there. Now, he’s proud to be back in the donor’s chair.

Schermerhorn, 58, is among thousands of people, including current and former military members, who have returned to blood donation centers across the country after federal health officials lifted a ban that stood for more than two decades.

“It’s a responsibility. It’s a civic duty,” said Schermerhorn, who donated on Veterans Day at the ImpactLife center in Davenport, Iowa. “You really don’t have to go out of your way too much to help your fellow man.”

Blood collectors nationwide are tracking down people like Schermerhorn, U.S. citizens who lived, worked or vacationed in the United Kingdom, France, Ireland or served at military bases in Europe during various periods between 1980 and 2001, as well as anyone who received blood transfusions in those three countries anytime since 1980.

Since 1999, those people have been banned from giving blood in the U.S. for fear that they’d been exposed to mad cow disease. Outbreaks of the cattle-borne infection swept through Europe, eventually killing at least 232 people, mostly in the U.K. Four cases have been reported in the U.S., all in people who likely acquired the infections abroad, health officials said.

The rare disease is caused by an abnormal form of a protein called a prion, which triggers damaging changes to the brain and central nervous system. It’s spread from sick cattle to people who eat contaminated beef, but it can also be transmitted through blood transfusions. But after decades of research and reassessment, the federal Food and Drug Administration has determined that the risk of the disease has abated, thanks in large part to changes in the way cattle are raised and the treatment of donated blood. The agency eased the restrictions over the past two years and fully lifted them in May.

That means hundreds of thousands of former donors can once again roll up their sleeves, perhaps bolstering U.S. blood collections, which lagged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The most important thing is for individuals that believe they may now be eligible to call their local blood center,” said Kate Fry, chief executive of America’s Blood Centers, which represents more than 600 blood collection sites providing nearly 60% of the U.S. blood supply.

The American Red Cross, which provides about 40% of the U.S. supply, last month began accepting donors previously deferred because of the risk of mad cow disease, formally known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD.

Invariably fatal, with an incubation period that can last years or even decades, the emergence of vCJD in humans in the late 1990s alarmed officials responsible for the safety of the blood supply, said Dr. Rita Reik, chief medical officer for OneBlood, a collection center in Florida.

“It was a scary new disease,” Reik said. “Which is why it required such a length of time to study this disease to get a level of comfort to get to the deferral.”

In the U.K., five cases of vCJD were transmitted by blood transfusions, according to the National Health Service. Today, the risk of being infected via blood transfusion is “essentially negligible,” Reik said.

Tracking down lost donors has been a challenge, said Dr. John Armitage, chief executive of the Oklahoma Blood Institute. His staff has used emails, postcards and phones to contact more than 6,300 donors who had been turned away since 1999. So far, about 350 have returned to donate.

“We feel good about that as a first effort,” Armitage said. “We know there are folks that we haven’t reached yet.”

Bans remain in place for people who are suspected of having vCJD or related diseases, those who have a blood relative with a related disease and those who received pituitary human growth hormone or a certain type of brain tissue transplant from cadavers.

The now-lifted military ban included Schermerhorn, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was stationed in Germany from 1988 to 1992.

Schermerhorn stayed away for years — until he saw a local news story about the recent change. He’s donated his rare type O-negative blood eight times since last year.

For Schermerhorn, giving blood is one way to repay past donors who stepped up when his older brother was badly injured in a boating accident.

“My brother had taken nine pints of blood from complete strangers,” he said. “They were part of the lifeline that kept him alive.”

Source: Voice of America

Beijing’s most populous district urged residents to stay at home Monday, extending a request from the weekend as the city’s COVID-19 case numbers rose, with many businesses shut and schools in the area shifting classes online.

Nationally, new case numbers held steady on Sunday near April peaks as China battles outbreaks in cities across the country, from Zhengzhou in central Henan province to Guangzhou in the south and Chongqing in the southwest.

In the capital, two COVID-19 deaths were reported Sunday. Authorities earlier reported the death of an 87-year-old Beijing man, the country’s first official COVID-19 fatality since May 26, raising China’s coronavirus death toll to 5,227. It is unclear if his death is one of the two reported Sunday.

In addition to the deaths, the city reported 154 symptomatic new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections and 808 asymptomatic cases, local government authorities said Monday.

This compared with 69 symptomatic cases and 552 asymptomatic cases the day before. Authorities also found 266 cases on Sunday outside quarantined areas.

On Sunday, Beijing city officials urged residents of the sprawling Chaoyang district, home to nearly 3.5 million people as well as embassies and office towers, to stay home Monday.

“The number of cases discovered outside quarantine is increasing rapidly at present, and there are hidden transmission risks from multiple places,” Liu Xiaofeng, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Prevention and Control, told a media briefing.

“The pressure on Beijing has further increased,” he said.

Many Beijing residents stocked up on food during the weekend, with some delivery services experiencing delays.

Hairdressers in the neighboring Dongcheng district were also told to close.

On Sunday, China reported 24,435 new COVID-19 infections for November 19, down slightly from 24,473 a day earlier but near highs clocked in April when Shanghai, China’s largest city, was in the middle of an outbreak and a grinding two-month lockdown.

China is trying to ease the impact of containment measures that drag on the economy and frustrate residents fed up with lockdowns, quarantine and other disruptions, even as it reiterates its commitment to its zero-COVID approach.

While official infection tallies are low by global standards, China tries to stamp out every infection chain, making it an outlier nearly three years into the pandemic.

Under a series of measures unveiled this month, Chinese health authorities have sought more targeted COVID-19 curbs, sparking investor hopes of a more significant easing even as China faces its first winter battling the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Many analysts expect such a shift to begin only in March or April, however, with the government arguing that President Xi Jinping’s signature zero-COVID policy saves lives.

Experts warn that full reopening requires a massive vaccination booster effort and a change in messaging in a country where the disease remains widely feared.

The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper, warned Sunday that the pandemic may expand because of mutations and seasonal factors.

“The situation of pandemic control is severe. We must maintain confidence that we will win, resolutely overcome issues such as insufficient understanding and insufficient preparation,” it said in an editorial.

Source: Voice of America