O positive blood is not rare; it is actually one of the most common blood types in many populations.

How common O positive is

  • In the United States, about 38% of the population has O positive blood, making it the most common blood type there.
  • UK donor data show roughly 35–36% of donors are O positive, again placing it in the top spot.

Why people still talk about it

  • O positive is heavily used in hospitals, especially for trauma and general transfusions, so blood centers often say it is “most needed,” which some people confuse with “rare.”
  • Because more than 75–80% of people have an Rh-positive blood type and can receive O positive, demand is high even though the type itself is very common.

What’s actually rare

  • O negative is much rarer than O positive; only about 7–14% of people have it, depending on the country.
  • Among the standard ABO/Rh groups, AB negative is typically the rarest, often around 1% of the population.

Quick forum-style takeaway

People online sometimes talk about “having rare O blood,” but that usually mixes up O positive (common, but very important for donations) with O negative (genuinely rarer and often highlighted as a universal donor type).

TL;DR: If you are O positive, your blood type is common, not rare—but it is highly valuable because so many patients can receive it and hospitals use it very frequently.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.