RAPID antigen testing (RAT) has a vital role to play in supporting community pharmacies to keep their doors open in the event that a COVID-19 positive patient enters the store, Pharmaceutical Society of Australia CEO, Mark Kinsela, believes.
Speaking during a webinar on Wed night, Kinsela called on the Federal Government to fund frequent RATs for pharmacy staff, as Australia prepares to live with the virus.
"When we look globally... COVID-19 vaccinations are really critically important for reducing morbidities and mortality from COVID-19," he said.
"Our population are doing an amazing job of vaccinating our community, but it's not going to get rid of COVID - we're going to have to live with COVID for a number of years in the community.
"The key issue that we're arguing for is, firstly to protect pharmacists and pharmacy staff - one of the big challenges we've got is that patients when they're sick, this is the first place they go when they have symptoms - and we've seen this time and time again, even when they've just come back from their COVID PCR test - they drop past their community pharmacy to get a box of Panadol or get some advice.
"It exposes the community pharmacy to COVID-19 and even though we know that staff are overwhelmingly vaccinated now, it's so difficult for pharmacies that have to shutdown to do a deep clean, to essentially close their business for a number of days.
"What we see as a really vital opportunity for the Government is to fund pharmacy to support RAT of staff.
"That might be prophylactic testing before each shift, so staff can have that confidence that they haven't got COVID at the time.
"Then that would hopefully prevent that pharmacy having to close down and go through the deep clean."
Kinsela added that the community pharmacy sector could also be used to provide RAT services for other essential workers and for people visiting aged care facilities.
"In aged care where you've got vulnerable populations, you don't want COVID-19 entering into these population groups, even with very high vaccination rates, so prophylactic RAT prior to entering into an aged care facility is really sensible," he said.
"This should be something that community pharmacy can support patients to do."
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 17 Sep 21
To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 17 Sep 21
