Some hospital corridors have a particular kind of quiet—until you hear the click of a monitor alarm and suddenly everyone moves faster. In Nashville, a situation like that became part of a story about transfusions, donor rules, and the stubborn power of misinformation.
At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Misryoum newsroom reported that patients needing blood transfusions were sometimes asking for a very specific kind of donation: blood that came from donors who had not been vaccinated against covid-19. The hospital has now publicly described how these requests affected care, including delays that contributed to a life-threatening reaction in at least one case.
Misryoum analysis indicates the requests were “often driven by misinformation about vaccine safety and the blood supply,” rather than by evidence-based concerns. Jeremy Jacobs, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, pointed to the broader system behind donated blood—how the community blood supply is already highly regulated and carefully screened, and how there is no evidence that requesting unvaccinated blood improves transfusion safety.
To understand what was happening in practice, Jacobs and colleagues analysed blood donations recorded at the Vanderbilt centre between January 2024 and December 2025. They found 15 patients—or their caregivers—who asked for directed donations, where a blood donation is given by a chosen person, often a relative, instead of being pulled from a blood bank. Directed donations are only permitted in the UK and Australia under exceptional circumstances, such as if someone has a rare blood type and a suitable blood-bank donor isn’t available. In the US, it’s allowed more broadly, but discouraged, with policies varying widely between centres.
Here’s the key detail: all 15 patients requested directed donations specifically because they wanted blood from a donor who they knew had not been vaccinated against covid-19. The snag is that the vaccination status of anonymised donors isn’t recorded or conveyed by blood banks, so the usual system can’t (and doesn’t try to) match transfusions to a donor’s vaccine history. And when patients insist anyway, it changes the workflow. The researchers found the requests led to treatment delays that put patients at risk—one extreme example involved a patient’s haemoglobin level reaching a critical point, which can cause organ injury and failure. Another patient developed anaemia.
Misryoum newsroom reporting also notes that directed donation is operationally more complex than using routine blood supplies. It takes more coordination, additional collection, processing, tracking, and timing. And while blood is screened before transfusion, direct donations have also been linked to a higher infection risk—because they are often one-off donations, rather than repeat community donations where donors might be known to blood banks and may be more cautious about exposure.
This debate isn’t new in medical history, either. Directed donation became more prominent during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s, then resurfaced again when mRNA covid-19 vaccines became available. These vaccines work by injecting part of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code so the body produces one of its proteins; the immune system then reacts and helps clear cells with that protein if the person later catches the virus. Research has repeatedly shown the vaccines are safe and highly effective—but misinformation has wrongly linked them to fertility problems and other health issues, and conspiracy theories have even claimed the vaccines contain a microchip and affect DNA.
Misryoum newsroom analysis also points to confirmation that’s been growing elsewhere: in 2025, a study found that receiving blood donations from people vaccinated against covid-19 is safe. “Requests for unvaccinated blood reflect broader uncertainty about vaccines among a proportion of the public, rather than any recognised transfusion risk,” said Ash Toye at the University of Bristol, UK. Meanwhile, Misryoum editorial desk noted that the Welsh Blood Service said last year that people were asking about donors’ vaccination status, and that there was a rejected petition to split blood donations by vaccination status. Still, in Oklahoma, legislators proposed mandating that patients have access to unvaccinated blood—so the pressure may not be easing anytime soon.
Overall, the Vanderbilt experience is a reminder of how misinformation can create real operational burdens for patients, hospitals, and blood providers. Jacobs’ message is also pretty clear: address concerns respectfully and thoughtfully, even when they aren’t supported by evidence. And—actually, it’s hard to say whether that’s going to be enough by itself, especially when the system can’t reliably sort donors by vaccine history without compromising safety and speed.
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