Australia’s blood banks not ‘tainted’ by Covid-19 vaccines: experts

Experts say messenger RNA (mRNA) and spike proteins in Covid-19 vaccines do not “taint” blood donated by vaccinated individuals, contrary to a misleading claim circulating both within Australia as well as abroad. They told AFP the vaccines are rapidly broken down once they have stimulated the body’s immune response so it was “extremely unlikely” they would be present in donated blood. According to the Australian Red Cross, blood donations undergo stringent tests to ensure safety and there is no evidence blood from vaccinated donors pose a risk to recipients.

“Emergency: Australia’s blood supply potentially tainted by mRNA & spike proteins!” reads the caption of a video shared on Facebook here on November 13, 2023.

The video shows a man advocating for access to “unvaxxed blood” outside a blood donation centre of the Australian Red Cross, the country’s only blood collection agency.

“We’re outside the managers of our nation’s blood supply and they’re not telling you about a major emergency for our country,” he says. “Blood supplies are potentially now tainted by mRNA and by these spike proteins.”

The Facebook post links to a petition calling for blood donations to be separated according to the donors’ vaccination status, and a fundraising page to support this effort.

The video was also shared elsewhere on Facebook in Australia here, here and here, as well as internationally here, here, here and here, alongside similar claims.

They closely resemble unfounded claims that receiving blood from people inoculated against coronavirus “contaminates” the body – leading to some advocating for blood banks to draw from “pure” unvaccinated people.

AFP previously reported on how Covid-19 misinformation had spawned this “pure blood” movement here.

Vaccine traces ‘extremely unlikely’

Coronavirus vaccines work by training the body to fight viruses without causing the illness.

The Covid vaccines do this by either injecting the virus’s spike protein into the body — usually the muscle of the upper arm — using a harmless virus, or using mRNA technology to give the body’s immune system a “blueprint” of the spike protein so it can identify the virus and fight it if infected.

Tony Cunningham, an infectious diseases and vaccine expert from the University of Sydney, told AFP it was “extremely unlikely” that Australia’s blood supply is “tainted” with mRNA and spike proteins (archived link).

He explained in a November 21 email that the cells that absorb the mRNA and spike proteins from the vaccination die soon after stimulating the immune system.

“The amounts in muscle and lymph node are small, transient and would require leakage of sessile resident cells into the circulation during donation,” Cunningham added, explaining that sessile resident cells are typically non-circulating cells that reside in lymph glands.

AFP has previously debunked false claims mRNA and spike protein cannot be broken down by the body, and result in adverse effects.

Frédéric Altare of French health research institute INSERM told AFP in July 2023 that the “production of spike protein is very transitory… The injected RNA as well as the proteins triggered by it disintegrate very quickly.”

He told AFP in September 2023 that modifications had been made that “have improved the life expectancy of both the RNA and the protein it produces in order to improve their capacity to activate a stronger immune response.”

Only pieces of the spike protein could remain in the body, Altare added, and research so far shows no negative side effects from the prolonged presence of spike protein remnants.

‘No evidence of risk’

According to the fundraising page linked to in the misleading Facebook post, the man in the video is Charles MacKenzie, who has for decades campaigned on behalf of Australian victims of a contaminated blood scandal and heads a support group (archived link).

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported that thousands of Australians were infected with blood containing Hepatitis C or HIV between the 1970s and early 1990s, before proper screening procedures were introduced (archived link).

MacKenzie believes Covid-19 vaccines pose a similar threat to blood banks, but the Red Cross says there is nothing to worry about.

More than half a million Australians give blood at the Red Cross’ 96 donation centres across Australia, and their donations are tested for compatibility and infections, including HIV, hepatitis B and C, and syphilis (archived links here and here).

The organisation says: “If a screening test for infectious disease is confirmed reactive, and the donation is destroyed, and donor is notified and counselled as part of standard Lifeblood procedures.”

Provided they feel “healthy and well”, people can donate blood three days after they receive a Covid-19 vaccination, Red Cross spokeswoman Jemma Falkenmire told AFP in a November 20 email.

“Whilst blood services cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that there are no components associated with vaccination in donated blood, in the event of the very small chance they are there, it would be at ultra-low levels and there is no evidence of a risk to a recipient,” she said.

“Any mRNA from vaccines is also rapidly broken down and does not stay in vaccinated people.”

The Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies, America’s Blood Centers and the American Red Cross dismissed similar claims made in the United States as “misinformation” (archived link).

“Similar to other vaccines such as those for measles, mumps or influenza, COVID-19 vaccines are designed to generate an immune response to help protect an individual from illness, but vaccine components themselves do not replicate through blood transfusions or alter a blood recipients’ DNA,” the organisations said in a joint statement.

They said that because “there is no scientific evidence that demonstrates adverse outcomes from the transfusions of blood products collected from vaccinated donors”, there is “no medical reason to distinguish or separate blood donations from individuals who have received a COVID-19 vaccination.”

AFP has debunked several false and misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines and blood donations here, here and here.