Impact of blood screening strategies for Hepatitis C virus on blood safety

Objective To establish a reasonable and effective blood screening strategy for Hepatitis C virus (HCV), so as to reduce the risk of blood transfusion transmission, ensure blood safety and improve the quality of blood screening. Methods In order to evaluate HCV screening strategies comprehensively, the unqualified blood donations due to anti-HCV alone positivity in Dalian from 2017 to 2021 was tracked, with combined detection methods of electro-chemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) and HCV-RNA nucleic acid test (NAT). Results A total of 851 (0.20%) unqualified donations due to anti-HCV alone positivity were screened from 2017 to 2021, with a decreasing trend in both numbers and rate. Among them, the unqualified rate of samples with anti-HCV reactivity in both dural-ELISA-reagent and NAT decreased significantly (P