More people requesting ‘unvaccinated’ blood for themselves or their children

A growing number of patients who need transfusions are asking for blood from unvaccinated donors, a difficult request to honor, given that blood centers don’t ask donors if they’ve been vaccinated and don’t label blood according to vaccinated status.

These requests often delay care and, in some cases, harm patients’ health, according to a report published late last week in Transfusion. Health systems need to develop standardized policies, include counseling, to handle these requests, the report’s authors wrote.

The US blood supply is incredibly safe, the authors wrote. Donations are carefully screened for HIV and other potentially infectious microbes. There’s no evidence that blood from unvaccinated people is any safer than other blood.

The requests for “unvaccinated blood” increased after the release of COVID-19 vaccines, which saved an estimated 20 million lives in their first year of use, but which have been the subject of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center received 15 requests for unvaccinated blood from January 1, 2024, to December 31, 2025, according to the new report. The median age of patients was 17 years old; more than half were children.

Problems with ‘direct’ blood donations

Hospitals have no way to know if donated blood comes from vaccinated or unvaccinated donors, and there are no tests that can differentiate the blood of vaccinated from unvaccinated people.

That leads some patients to ask for blood donation from particular people, such as relatives, whom they know to be unvaccinated. That’s a risky request, because such “direct donations” from first-time donors are more likely to contain potentially harmful pathogens compared with blood collected from people who donate regularly, authors noted.

In the study, 13 patients received blood donated specifically for them by family members. 

Two patients got much sicker after refusing a transfusion with standard blood. One developed anemia, which occurs when people don’t have enough iron in their blood. The other developed hemodynamic shock, a life-threatening condition in which people have inadequate blood flow and oxygen delivery to tissues, which can cause multi-organ failure. 

These cases challenge the claim by some anti-vaccine activists that insisting on blood from unvaccinated donors is “a benign or low-risk accommodation,” authors wrote.

Lawmakers in several states—including Connecticut, Kentucky, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming—have attempted to mandate that patients have access to blood transfusions from unvaccinated donors. 

In January, an Oklahoma legislator went so far as to propose that his state run its own blood bank in order to provide blood donations from unvaccinated people.

So far, none of the bills has passed.