Committee rejects bill that would label blood by COVID‑19 mRNA vaccination status; blood providers warn of impossible compliance and supply risk

The Senate Health and Welfare Committee voted down House Bill 131 after lengthy testimony from hospitals, blood centers, clinicians and patients’ advocates about whether blood should be labeled by donors’ COVID‑19 mRNA vaccination status.

Representative Bruce, sponsor of HB 131, said the bill would add a donor question about mRNA vaccination and allow nonemergency patients to request blood labeled according to the donor’s self‑reported vaccination status. Bruce described the proposal as an ‘‘informed‑consent’’ measure and said it would not challenge vaccine safety but would give recipients a choice.

Multiple witnesses from the blood‑collection sector opposed the bill. Tony Lawson, vice president of the Idaho Hospital Association, urged the committee to hold the bill, saying Idaho hospitals already face periodic blood shortages and that any policy making collection, processing or allocation more complex could exacerbate shortages. Vitalant regional director Michael Martinez testified that labeling blood by vaccination status is impractical and unsupported by medical or scientific need; he said there is no laboratory test that distinguishes antibodies from vaccination versus prior infection and warned the measure could increase costs and reduce donations.

Red Cross and other blood‑bank witnesses told the committee they are federally regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the AABB, and they said the FDA controls the donor questionnaire content and the labeling processes. Nicole Erwin, CEO of the American Red Cross of Idaho, and Dharma Nichols, Red Cross blood services executive, said there is no verifiable test to detect mRNA vaccine components in donated blood and that labeling based on donor self‑report would be misleading and could jeopardize the blood supply. Dr. Cole Elliott, medical director for the Red Cross in Idaho, cited a recent multicenter study of hospital patients and said transfusions from vaccinated or previously infected donors were not associated with higher thrombosis or hospital mortality.

Clinicians including Dr. Jessica Corian, a transfusion‑medicine physician, described routine inventory management and explained that directed donations and other special handling are already possible but are complex, expensive and sometimes unavailable; she and other clinicians said the state law as written could create incompatibilities with federal regulation and supply chains. Testimony in favor of HB 131 came from individual patients who said they sought donor choice for religious or personal reasons and described difficulties arranging directed donations under current practice.

Representative Bruce and supporters argued the bill would fit within FDA provisions that allow directed donations and that the state may add donor‑question items; opponents responded that the FDA sets minimums for safety and that adding labeling requirements that cannot be verified would create legal, operational and supply risks. After debate and a motion to send the bill to the floor with a due‑pass recommendation, senators voted; the committee recorded ayes and nays and the motion failed. Committee members who opposed the bill cited the inability to verify donor vaccination status, the risk of reducing donations and the impracticality of compliance for the state’s two major blood suppliers.