13.3 percent of blood donors carry Covid-antibodies

Currently, 13.3 percent of blood donors in the Netherlands have Covid-19 antibodies in their blood, blood bank Sanquin said on Wednesday. The blood bank checks about 2 thousand plasma donors every week for antibodies via a random sample

At 15 percent, Limburg and Noord-Brabant are the provinces with the most Covid-19 antibody-carrying blood donors. The number of people with anti-bodies in their system is a good indicator of the spread of the coronavirus in that region.

Sanquin predicts that the percentage of donors with anti-bodies will continue to rise after the RIVM reported an increase in infection numbers in December. In the last month of 2020, 10.3 percent of blood donors carried anti-bodies against the coronavirus.

The full effect of the spike in coronavirus cases will not be able to be determined until later because donors need to be without symptoms for at least two weeks prior to donating blood.