AABB2026: How Quickly Can We Build Up the National Blood Supply?

The U.S. blood system can build red blood cell (RBC) inventory by 2,000 to 3,500 units per day for at least three weeks, but inventory can fall faster than it rises, according to national data presented by Katie Risvold, of Circulate; and Floyd Wilson, of OneBlood Inc.,  who shared the findings during the Saturday session “How Quickly Can We Build Up the National Blood Supply? Measuring Shocks to the U.S. Blood Supply Through Real-Time Data and Case Studies on Disruption, Supply-Chain Stress, and System Recovery.”

The speakers drew on Circulate’s national dataset, which directly represents about 60% of the U.S. blood supply, to measure how the system responds to operational shocks such as weather events, supply chain failures and cyber incidents. With these disruptions occurring more often, real-time data can help blood centers and hospitals see the scope of a shock as it unfolds and plan their response. The data show an average daily RBC inventory of about 250,000 units and an average daily platelet inventory of about 8,300 units in 2026.

Measuring the System’s Ramp-Up Capacity

To find out how quickly national inventory can be rebuilt, the speakers looked at the two steepest sustained increases in RBC inventory since January 2022. The results were strikingly similar.

From January 30 to February 20, 2024, inventory grew by about 2,900 RBCs per day, a 37% increase from three weeks earlier. Throughout the course of a longer 41-day window in early 2024, the system kept up a rate of about 2,600 RBCs per day. A second ramp, from August 3 to August 24, 2026, reached about 3,500 RBCs per day and raised inventory by 36%. Across a longer 36-day stretch from late July through August 2026, the rate held at about 2,500 RBCs per day.

The findings suggest that the system can raise RBC inventory by roughly a third in three weeks, and that the pace slows somewhat when the effort runs longer than a month.

Inventory Falls Faster Than It Rises

The speakers then examined three sharp drops in RBC inventory, each in January: 2023, 2025 and 2026. Inventory fell by about 3,200 RBCs per day in 2023, 5,000 per day in 2025 and 4,200 per day in 2026. Each episode cut national inventory by about 30%.

The fastest decline was well above the fastest ramp-up recorded in the dataset. In practical terms, gains that take weeks of extra collections to build can be lost much more quickly.