A survey that checks for COVID-19 antibodies using samples from donated blood is legal, and the randomly selected donors are informed and can opt out, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.
Some blood donors had questioned whether the survey breaches privacy and should require institutional review board approval, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), who is also the CECC spokesman, said the center on Feb. 20 announced that it has entrusted the Taiwan Blood Services Foundation to work with the CDC to conduct a COVID-19 serology antibody survey.
Photo courtesy of the Central Epidemic Command Center
The survey is conducted based on the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) and the Regulations Governing the Implementation of the Epidemiological Surveillance and Advance-Alert System for Communicable Diseases (傳染病流行疫情監視及預警系統實施辦法), he said.
The foundation would randomly select 7,000 samples from blood donated from January to June this year, and test for antibodies for the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2, which could indicate prior infection, Lo said.
The survey is a legitimate part of routine disease monitoring, not a research project, so it does not need approval by an institutional review board, he said.
The survey has an “opt out” mechanism, he said, adding that donors whose blood had been randomly selected would be informed and have the option to opt out of the testing.
Among the 2,400 blood bags donated in January and February that were selected for the survey, 24 donors chose to opt out, Lo said.
The randomly selected blood samples are anonymized and given pseudonyms before they are tested for antibodies, so the results cannot be linked back to individual donors, who also cannot be informed of the result, he said.
As some people questioned why the center did not inform them beforehand, Lo said the donors are informed before their blood is used for the test.
Not all donors of the more than 1 million blood bags expected to be donated in the six months would be informed, he said, adding that the foundation feared that it might slow down the donation process.
The center is grateful to most of the 2,400 blood donors who were informed about the test and agreed to their blood sample being used, he said, adding that the donations make it possible to monitor the infection situation in local communities as it changes.
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