Plasma donation in Sudbury to begin in August, but new facility won't be ready until year's end

The plan to start collecting plasma donation in Sudbury in August is going ahead but the new building won't be ready until the end of the year.

Canadian Blood Services is renovating an 11,000 square foot space on Lasalle Boulevard. But due to COVID-19, its completion date had to be pushed to the end of the year.

Jean-Paul Bdard, the vice-president of plasma operations, says because they want to get going on plasma donation collection, they'll be using the former blood donation site on Barrydowne Road, as a temporary location.

They did have to make some modifications to the smaller sized building to allow for plasma collection.

"Plasma we collect on site, but you also have to freeze the plasma,so that requires a different facility and we've adapted our facility to do that."

Bdard adds that other changes were connected to COVID-19 and public health measures.

"For both sites...there'll be an active wellness screening at the entry level and the way we're setting up our beds is they will be two metres apart," hesaid.

"Obviously there'll be increased cleaning of all our equipment and services. We're also going to limit the number of donors that come in to the centre."

Donation process

For the donor, plasma donation follows the same process as blood donations. However, because red blood cells in the blood are returned to the donor, the donorcan give more frequently on a weekly basis.

Bedard said they are also asking donors to book appointments ahead of time. It might be a longer wait Bedard estimates each visit will take about 1.5 hours. To make room for that, CBS will not be taking any drop-in donors at this time.

Donors can be rest assurethat the 12-person staff is taking precautions to limit the spread of COVID-19.

"Our employees and our volunteers and our donors will be wearing mandatory masks while in our facilities," Bedard said. "So we are making it as safe as we can and following all guidelines that are necessary to be followed, obviously."

Bedard also reassurespotential donors that there is no risk of contracting COVID-19 through a blood donation.