Pharmacy Daily | Border closure hits pharmacy workers

VICTORIAN pharmacies along the NSW border are facing workforce shortages as result of the unintended consequences of COVID-19 measures.

Pharmacy Guild of Australia Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone, told Pharmacy Daily that travel exemptions had been granted to some hospital pharmacists who live outside of the defined 'border zone', but not to those working in community pharmacy.

Under the current restrictions pharmacy staff who reside or need to travel to just outside the 'border zone' are not able to do so without having to quarantine for 14 days.

"Whilst it is understandable that the NSW Government takes measures to protect members of the community from their state, there are glaring unintended consequences of the NSW/Victoria border closure that could potentially have serious consequences on healthcare in communities nearby to the border, and the livelihoods of pharmacists and pharmacy staff that may actually reside in NSW," he said.

"The fact that hospital pharmacists, but not community pharmacists have been given exemption from the border order is a massive slap in the face to the tirelessly working community pharmacy teams on both sides of the NSW/Victoria border.

"Pharmacists that are at the frontline in patient facing roles are critical. Full stop.

"Not just hospital pharmacists, but also absolutely community pharmacists."

Tassone noted that some of the towns impacted by the border restrictions had no active cases.

"We are already being contacted by a number of members spreading across Northern Victoria (e.g. Rochester, Shepparton and Wangaratta) whose staff are not able to travel to their pharmacies and caught out by this bizarre anomaly.

"These are communities already stretched and challenged by rural health workforce shortages without a state government telling their teams they're not considered 'critical' enough to be given rights of passage to and from their employ.

"Community pharmacists and their teams have continued to turn up day in day out throughout the COVID pandemic, and in some of these affected communities -- during the bushfire crisis earlier in the year, doing whatever they could to look after their communities.

"We call upon the NSW government to urgently review this border order and include pharmacists on the frontline -- not just hospital pharmacists, in the exemption from their border order."

Meanwhile, the ABC reported that staff at Wangaratta Hospital were being forced to work double shifts following the implementation of changes to the permit scheme allowing essential workers to traverse the border last week.