RISK-AVERSE bureaucrats are stalling the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines by providing poor advice about community pharmacy's capacity to join the immunisation campaign to State Governments, Pharmacy Guild of Australia National President, Trent Twomey, believes.
Speaking to Sky News Cairns following the announcement that Boonah-based pharmacist, Sue Pocock, had administered Australia's first COVID-19 shot at a community pharmacy, Twomey stressed there was no increased risk posed by having doses of the vaccines administered in pharmacies.
"[Other State Governments] are receiving poor advice from their risk-averse state-based bureaucracies," he said.
"There is no level of risk here that is elevated compared to general practice or compared to Queensland Health.
"Community pharmacies have been assessed by the same expression of interest process that the Commonwealth Government assess general practice by.
"The pharmacies have done the same level of training - the exact same module that is run by the Australian College of Nursing, so the infrastructure's there, the training's there [and] the customer demand is there."
The Guild President said engaging community pharmacies to administer the vaccines could also help tackle vaccine hesitancy, with pharmacists able to reassure patients about the safety of the immunisations and provide them, once the patients feel comfortable having a shot.
Twomey added that gaining State approval for community pharmacies to start rolling out COVID-19 vaccines would be crucial in the coming days, as Australia nears the 12-week mark since general practices started administering the AstraZeneca shot.
"The big bottleneck that we have that's going to be right across Australia from next week is, we're going to have all those people who have received their first shot [will] start rocking up for their second shot," he said.
"How is the general practice network going to handle the demand to not only give the second shot, but also to continue at the levels they have been of giving the first dose?
"It makes absolutely no sense not to use the 4,000 pharmacies [that have been approved by the Federal Government]."
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