LA County Hit Hard by Blood Shortage Amid COVID-19 Surge

LA County Hit Hard by Blood Shortage Amid COVID-19 Surge
Registered nurse Alisha Thiebert cares for COVID-19 patients in a makeshift ICU at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center on Jan. 21, 2021, in Torrance, Calif. Mario Tama/Getty Images
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Los Angeles County officials are urging residents to donate blood as the national blood shortage crisis is impacting local hospitals—to the point of prompting an hours-long shutdown of a trauma center by the county’s Department of Health Services earlier this week.

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s trauma center had to stop accepting new patients for over two hours on Jan. 10 due to insufficient blood supplies.