T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK Belmont County Commissioners Josh Meyer, left, J.P. Dutton and Jerry Echemann, back, hear from Sharon Kesselring, center, executive director of the Central Appalachia Region Ohio Valley chapter of the American Red Cross, last week about the organization’s activities during the COVID-19 pandemic and the persistent need of the blood supply. Kesselring credits volunteers such as Frank Papini, right, for helping to keep the organization going.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — March is Red Cross Awareness Month and the organization has not been idle, even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Belmont County Board of Commissioners recognized the occasion last week and heard from Sharon Kesselring, executive director of the Central Appalachia Region Ohio Valley chapter of the American Red Cross, about the organization’s activities.

She said the Red Cross was involved in 10 disaster responses in the county last year and served 35 people with issues such as financial aid, basic essentials and collaboration with other agencies.

The chapter also provided assistance and critical care for active service personnel and veterans, with 94 cases of help for direct service members or families in Belmont County. In addition, there were 650 training units last year covering CPR, first aid and other training.

Most notably, 713 units of blood were collected in Belmont County last year.

“Last year was a tough year collecting blood,” Kesselring said. “It has picked up.”

Kesselring said the lack of blood was declared a “crisis” — the first time she had heard the term used to describe the state of the blood supply. She said issues were many and widespread. Staff members contracted COVID, causing the group to cancel some donation events.

She said the blood supply is still vulnerable, even though it has increased considerably. The chapter’s coverage area is 19 counties in Ohio and West Virginia, and a population of about 500,000 people.

“As a result, we need to prepare to respond to any disaster that occurs. We can do our part of making sure the blood supply is substantially at a level that we don’t have to keep worrying and putting out crisis alerts,” she said.

“There is still a need for blood. Although we have come out of the crisis that we announced the first of the year, we are still vulnerable with our blood supply, and we still need to have people getting online or doing it on the blood donor app on their smartphone. Schedule an appointment and give at the nearest and most convenient location that shows up on there. It’s important because we prefer and feel comfortable when we have a five-day supply of blood, and right now we don’t have that. We’re close to it, but not quite there yet,” she said.

“We are rebuilding that very depleted inventory and we need to make sure that it’s there when people need it,” Kesselring said.

“At the beginning of the year, we were at less than a one-day supply. We really were in a crisis. People have rescinded to the need and have come back. They have been donating and really filling all the spots that we have. Right now we’re at about a four-day supply. It varies with every day,” she said.

“We have been hit hard in very different ways during the pandemic. COVID has made us overnight sometimes turn around and figure out how to safely do what it is we need to do,” she said.

“The need for blood never stopped, therefore we need to continue to collect blood. The homes were still burning down. Disasters were still occurring. We had to be able to respond to those,” Kesselring said. “Working with the armed forces. Working with our veterans’ families, those had to continue. Our mission never stopped and we never skipped a beat.”

She added that since businesses and schools have reopened, the Red Cross is able to hold blood drives at those locations.

“That is making a difference,” she said.

Kesselring credited the dedication and adaptability of Red Cross volunteers. There are 10 volunteers in Belmont County.

“We’re recruiting more and more volunteers and making sure we’re going to be fully staffed by the time hurricane season begins,” she said. “It’s important to cover our basis, and the very base of that is making sure we have enough volunteers.”

The volunteers also rose to the challenge.

“At the beginning of COVID everything did go virtual, and some of our volunteers weren’t quite prepared,” she said. “They needed to be as safe as possible, so we had some protocols in place that a lot of people weren’t comfortable with.

“As we have come back through the different phases of COVID and the way we react to COVID, we are finding that some of our volunteers may have found other opportunities and decided to stay with those opportunities of voluntarism,” she said.

Other volunteers were lost through age or illness during the height of the pandemic.

“COVID really took a toll on any nonprofit,” she said. “As a result, all nonprofits are looking for a strengthening of the volunteer base.”

Frank Papini has donated blood and volunteered with the Red Cross for 14 years.

“I just like to work with the people at the Red Cross. They’re great people to work with, and I like the interaction with the people that come and give blood,” Papini said.

“I myself had COVID and I was concerned about it, but I went through the training and the treatments that we had at the Red Cross because of the protocols they put in place, and actually I felt very comfortable,” he said. “It was hard to come back, but I wanted to come back and I made sure that I did come back..

“Volunteering with the Red Cross is the best thing I ever did. I started out, I was giving blood and they asked me if I wanted to be a volunteer,” he said. “It’s a great organization to belong to.”

Kesselring said volunteer work ranges from response to disasters to assisting with setting up blood drive locations.

They remember conditions during the onset of COVID-19.

“It was confusing. Everybody thought we’d be shut down for two weeks,” Kesselring said. “Our offices are not officially opening until April 1, so almost two years that our offices have been actually closed, and yet we were able to perform mission-critical work, but we weren’t open to the general public.

“Technology has really played a huge role, especially for our volunteers who aren’t used to working with it on a day-to-day basis but still learned how to cope, how to make sure they’re pushing the right buttons to get into Zoom meetings. They never had to do before.” Kesselring said. “They’re as flexible as the rest of the Red Cross personnel are, and that’s what’s makes them so great at their job.”

“It was a challenge at first,” Papini said. “There was a lot thrown at us, but gradually it became normal. … It was a different experience but I’m glad I went through it, because now I’ve got more knowledge.”