PROPOSED pharmacy-based COVID-19 testing could be Queensland's Ruby Princess moment leading to a surge in community transmission, Australian Medical Association (AMA) Queensland President, Dr Chris Perry, warns.
Speaking during a Queensland Parliament Economics and Governance Committee hearing Perry said he could not "understand how a chemist shop is safe to conduct COVID testing".
"This could be the Ruby Princess and the quarantine debacle of Victoria coming to Queensland if we have an uptick in the number of cases," he said.
"I think it is crazy to even think of this at the moment.
"It is going to open the Government and people who push this line to Slater and Gordon and Shine Lawyers in the future."
Perry noted that Professional Pharmacists Australia (PPA), has voiced opposition to the planned trial (PD 17 Aug).
Responding to the AMA's concerns over the pilot, Pharmacy Guild of Australia Queensland Branch President, Trent Twomey, told the committee that the addition of pharmacy-based testing was about "making sure that a Queenslander gets to access a service and that it complies with the same clinical guidelines regardless of where they get to access it from".
"This is not about people who have, because of their travel history, come into contact with somebody who is at an increased risk," he said.
"This is just saying that for those people who get their Telfast, Nasonex or Codral Cold and Flu this will just provide that extra level of protection, that extra level of certainty that is consistent with the advice of the Chief Health Officer and is happening in other First World jurisdictions, both domestically and internationally.
"If we are going to have a mature conversation about keeping our economy open, keeping people as free as they possibly can be and decreasing risk, we have to ensure that we acknowledge this is both an economic crisis and a health crisis and that we utilise all of the resources we have at our disposal.
"That is the infrastructure and that is the private-public partnership that is the community pharmacy network in the state of Queensland.
"We are not here to fearmonger.
"We are here to offer our services.
"We will ensure that we comply with the same clinical guidelines that every other piece of the primary healthcare infrastructure needs to comply with."
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 25 Aug 20
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