MOVES to accelerate the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations (COVAX) through community pharmacies in rural and remote areas are being welcomed by the profession.
However, Pharmacy Guild of Australia National President, Trent Twomey, said the sector needed greater clarity on what National Cabinet's decision to defer the broader role of community pharmacies in the national COVAX campaign means.
Twomey noted that National Cabinet had stipulated that State and Territory governments can decide how they want to incorporate pharmacies in rural and remote areas into their vaccine campaigns, to boost uptake immediately.
"For Australians living in regional communities and the outback, 65 per cent of people are within 2.5km of a pharmacy," he said.
"For those whose home is a plane flight to the nearest hospital, for those living in small rural towns and in remote communities, the answer for State and Territory governments to keep people healthy is the network of local community pharmacies right across the country.
"All pharmacies identified under the rural, remote and very remote categories are now an option for the States and Territories to turn on in the recalibrated rollout.
"Using these pharmacies will help to ensure that communities in these areas are not disadvantaged by any focus on mass vaccination sites in metropolitan areas."
While welcoming the decision to allow rural and remote pharmacies to join the rollout campaign, Twomey voiced concern about the move to defer the broader use of pharmacies as immunisation sites.
"There is no timeline attached to the deferral, so we need to know if it means the full rollout is deferred until vaccine stocks are available or if the deferral is based on other criteria," he said.
"We have a network of more than 5,900 pharmacies across the country and we are ready to go.
"We have done the same training as doctors and nurse immunisers and we have the added benefit of more than half of these pharmacies being open extended hours and often at weekends.
"Some pharmacies are even open 24 hours a day.
"Clearly if you want community immunity then access is a huge factor and no healthcare professionals are more accessible than community pharmacists."
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