To stop the spread of coronavirus, the root reason behind the terrible pandemic that has taken the whole world by a storm, we have been forced to stay at home and maintain social distancing to mitigate the contraction with this contagious virus. Due to this, many social events have been cancelled or have been postponed for an indefinite time period. Amongst this was the Boston Strong blood drive organised by The Red Cross which was hosted every year on April 15, since the bombing at the Boston Marathon.
There were several cancellations in businesses and large conferences where the blood drives must have been hosted. “Nationwide, more than 400,000 units of blood that would have been collected otherwise have gone uncollected because of these cancellations," said Kelly Isenor, who is the external communications manager for the Red Cross in Boston. However, meanwhile, Northeastern University came forward to help in this noble cause by opening Matthew Arena for the blood drive. This idea first came up to a Northeastern graduate Kathy Alegria, who is the Red Cross district manager for donor services recruitment.
Required measures were taken to assure the safety of the blood donors and the volunteers from contracting any possibilities of coming into the close contact of the deadly virus or an infected person. To reassure this, the participants were checked by an infrared forehead thermometer to measure their temperature and were provided with masks for their protection. There were six beds for donations set up in ideal distances to avert from any physical contact and the chairs spread across a section of the empty rink was made useful as a physically distanced waiting area. The donors were checked twice with oral thermometers and were required to fill out their health information. For further protection, the volunteers sanitised the bed things that may have come to contact with the donors.
In these trying times, Northeastern has been always in the front line to provide support to the needy and have contributed to the community in a true crisis.
Rubena Bose