Bay's community pharmacies could bolster Covid-19 vaccine rollout

We are joining up with our sister titles across the country to launch 'A Shot In The Arm' campaign, which is urging the Prime Minister and Health Secretary to utilise the army of health professionals in our pharmacies who already successfully help to administer the flu vaccination programme every year.

Many of north Lancashire's pharmacies are located in key community and rural locations which would make access to the Covid-19 vaccination programme as efficient and user friendly as possible.

Rollout of the Covid-19 vaccination has been bolstered by the news that a third vaccine that is made by US company Moderna and works in a similar way to the Pfizer one that is already being offered on the NHS.

The Lancaster Guardian and its sister titles today challenge Boris Johnson to ensure that every citizen is only a short walk away from a vaccine centre.

We urge him to deploy the country’s network of 11,000 pharmacies as front-line Covid vaccine centres as part of that.

Despite increasing warm words from Government in the past few days that they will expand the use of the very limited number of the 200 largest pharmacies it is essential that every single one is given a cast-iron assurance that they will be allowed to play their part with the minimum of red tape.

Local pharmacies are highly trusted by their communities - and are convenient to access. Where they do not all have the staff and facilities to provide the jab, the government should urgently provide this support.

Thousands of readers have expressed concern over vaccine arrangements – from the information they are being given about their own jab to the distance they will have to travel to receive it.

There are also worries about the time it will take to build makeshift centres.

But the authorisation – and deployment – of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offers an opportunity for local pharmacies because it only requires one initial dose, the second coming up to 12 weeks later, and does not have to be stored at low temperatures to be effective.

And the advantages for both the Government – and local communities – appear to be so significant that they need to be taken further into account if 14 million are to be vaccinated by mid-February, the stated target.

There are 11,000 local pharmacies across Britain many of which have the capacity and are ready, willing and able to assist with this national effort. They have experience of vaccination programmes like winter flu jabs.

Pharmacists have the necessary qualifications – a crucial requirement – and their stores are accessible to most people. This would be a way of the Government signalling its support for high streets during the latest lockdown.

“There are over 11,000 pharmacies. If each of those does 20 a day that is 1.3 million a week extra vaccines that can be provided, very often to those who are hardest to reach,” said Royal Pharmaceutical Society president Sandra Gidley. “Why would any government not want to do that?”

We agree – and we look forward to Health Secretary Matt Hancock showing far greater ambition, and urgency, than his initial promise last week to involve just 200 community outlets.

As the Cabinet minister says himself, pharmacies “are highly engaged in their local community, often more local than any other healthcare setting”.

But we have one further request of the Government and that is to start providing far more easy-to-access information on the vaccine programme – and timetable – to provide families, particularly the elderly and clinically vulnerable, with the reassurance that they’ve not been forgotten.

One local pharmicist said: “Our customers are asking all the time, all the time. They are asking lots of questions and asking us ‘if you get some will you please let us know’.

They would rather have it done here. There are concerns about patients having to queue up outside, which is not practical so if we can do intermittently and not a certain volume - AstraZeneca is similar in terms of the flu jab storage and we take it out as and when we need it.”

Some pharmacists have also raised concerns over why an online pharmacy group has been chosen to partner with Morrisons supermarket, which has offered its car park spaces to assist with the roll-out.