Evening Edition: National Blood Supply At Critically Low Levels

The Fox News Rundown

FOX News Podcasts

Daily News, News, Politics

3.4 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

The American Red Cross has declared a severe blood shortage after the nationwide flu outbreak and widespread snowfall across the country. They say the national blood supply has fallen 35% over the past month with 350 blood drives from Oklahoma to Maine were cancelled because of the winter storm, which would have collected 10,000 units of blood. FOX’s Tonya J. Powers speaks with Dr. Courtney Lawrence, Division Chief Medical Officer of the American Red Cross, who says the shortage significant and is asking folks in good health who can drive safely to a donation center to do so. For more information or to find a donation center near you go to: redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RedCross Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Kennedy. I'm Bill Hemmer. I'm Harris Faulkner. And this is the Fox News rundown.
0:11.0	Friday, January 30th, 2026. I'm Tanya J. Powers. The American Red Cross is raising the alarm that blood supplies are low, and the recent wallup of winter hasn't
0:22.1	helped. We would expect and hope to be about 35% higher than where we are, so we have dropped
0:28.7	more than a third of our expected and planned inventory due to all of the challenges we
0:34.1	faced with the weather and with the flu activity during December and January.
0:39.2	This is the Fox News Rundown evening edition.
0:47.4	Winter weather is making a blood shortage in the U.S. worse.
0:51.2	This year's more severe flu season had already taken a toll on the number of blood donations
0:55.6	coming in, but the Red Cross says last weekend storm, with its snow, ice, and power outages,
1:01.5	has further decreased available supplies. Now, they're asking people to get involved by rolling
1:06.7	up their sleeves. The American Red Cross works across the entire country to collect blood from
1:11.6	blood donors so that we can have a nationalized blood supply to be able to provide to hospitals
1:17.2	and patients' needs across the country. Dr. Courtney Lawrence is the chief medical officer with
1:22.1	the American Red Cross. And so we have dipped down. We have a continuous monitoring of what we expect hospitals to need and to allow for some buffer because we know that there are emergencies and surges in need that are not always 100% predictable.
1:38.6	But we would expect and hope to be about 35% higher than where we are. So we have dropped more than a third of our
1:46.6	expected and planned inventory due to all of the challenges we faced with the weather and
1:52.1	with the flu activity during December and January. How had it been going before the weather? Did the
1:57.5	weather contribute a lot to this or was it just almost to this number? Where were we?
2:03.0	We were actually doing quite strong in our inventory up until that point. We expect that every year
2:08.7	winter is going to create some challenges, and that in itself is not uncommon, but really it has
2:14.5	been exceptional in terms of the geography impacted and the extent that it's impacted.
2:20.4	And just this week alone, including this past weekend with Fern coming in,
	...

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