Post-donation COVID-19 identification in blood donors

Abstract The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) outbreak, which was characterized as a pandemic on 11 March 2020 by the WHO, started in December 2019 with the emergence of pneumonia cases of unknown cause in Wuhan, Hubei, China [1]. SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, are enveloped, non-segmented, single stranded positive sense RNA viruses and are classified as a sister clade to the prototype human and bat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoVs) of the species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus [2]. So far, no respiratory virus, including SARS-CoV and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)-CoV, has been confirmed as transfusion-transmissible [3,4].