Fall in organ donations and transplants in Ceará in the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive study, April - June 2020.

Objective: To describe organ donations and transplants in Ceará state, Brazil, following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: This was a descriptive study using data from the Brazilian Organ Transplantation Association. The number of donors and transplants from April to June 2020 was compared to the same period in 2019 and to the first quarter of 2020.

Results: In the first half of 2020, the state registered 72 effective donors, just 17 (23.6%) of whom related to the second quarter. Of the 352 transplants in the first half of 2020, 37 (10.7%) were performed in the second quarter. Compared with the period from April to June 2019, there was a reduction of 67.9% and 89.3% in the number of donors and transplants, respectively, in the same period of 2020.

Conclusion: The number of donors and transplants in Ceará showed an important fall in the three months following the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for kidney, heart and cornea transplants.