Due to construction restraints, Bloodworks Northwest has moved its Feb. 16-17 pop-up donor center from the Northwest Sports Hub to the Lewis County Mall.
Donations are by appointment only, and donors can make an appointment online at https://dslnk.co/ChehalisPopUp, where Bloodworks will also post updates on any weather impacts to the event, though Jenni McCoy, Bloodworks’ senior recruitment representative for the Lewis County area, said that she doubts the pop-up event will be canceled due to snow conditions.
“There’s no substitute for giving blood … so when things like this happen, we do it anyway,” McCoy said.
Bloodworks began doing pop-up donation sites as an alternative to mobile drives, which don’t allow enough social-distancing space to be safe during the pandemic. Bloodworks lost roughly 60 % of their ability to collect blood donations when they decided to stop using their buses at the start of the pandemic.
In each pop-up event, four to six beds are set up in a spacious venue so that donors and volunteers can stay safely socially distanced during the donation process. Everything is sanitized between appointments, and all staff and volunteers follow FDA and CDC guidelines.
“It seems to be a model that’s working very well for us,” McCoy said.
The site has the capacity for 40 30- to 45-minute appointment slots per day — 80 total for the two-day event.
For this event, donors are still needed to fill roughly 24 open spots: three on Feb. 16 and 21 on Feb. 17. McCoy had Lewis County’s loyal population of donors to thank for the nearly-full appointment schedule on the first day of the event.
“That’s pretty typical of Lewis County, even though we just changed the location,” she said.
While Bloodworks supplies hospitals throughout the western Washington region, blood collected at local blood drives typically goes to local hospitals.
“Literally the blood we collect from you may be flowing in the veins of your neighbor a week from now,” said McCoy.
Bloodworks is an independent nonprofit that provides blood donations to hospitals in the Pacific Northwest. For more information, visit www.bloodworksnw.org.
