Vaccine campaign: NI pharmacies ready to give roll-out plan a ‘shot in the arm’ as programme scales up

This comes amid a national campaign by the News Letter and its sister titles across the UK to challenge the government to ensure that every citizen is only a short walk away from a vaccine centre.

We urge the government to deploy the UK’s network of more than 11,000 pharmacies – hundreds of which are in Northern Ireland – as front-line vaccination centres.

While the Stormont health department says that community pharmacies here will “have an important part to play” in the delivery of the vaccination programme “in the coming weeks and months”, the News Letter is demanding that every single pharmacy that is ready and able to play their part is given a cast-iron assurance that they will be allowed to do so.

Local pharmacies are highly trusted by their communities – and are convenient to access. Where they do not all have the staff and facilities to provide the jab, the government should urgently provide this support.

Thousands of readers have expressed concern over vaccine arrangements – from the information they are being given about their own jab to the distance they will have to travel to receive it. The authorisation – and deployment – of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine offers an opportunity for local pharmacies because it only requires one initial dose, the second coming up to 12 weeks later, and does not have to be stored at low temperatures to be effective.

The advantages for both the Government – and local communities – appear to be so significant that they need to be taken further into account if 14 million are to be vaccinated by mid-February, the stated UK target.

Community pharmacies have experience of vaccination programmes like winter flu jabs.

Pharmacists have the necessary qualifications – a crucial requirement – and their stores are accessible to most people. This would be a way of the government signalling its support for high streets during the latest lockdown.

“There are over 11,000 pharmacies. If each of those does 20-a-day that is 1.3 million-a-week extra vaccines that can be provided, very often to those who are hardest to reach,” said Royal Pharmaceutical Society president Sandra Gidley. “Why would any government not want to do that?”

We agree – and we look forward to Stormont Health Minister Robin Swann keeping his word and continuing the momentum by rolling out the coronavirus vaccine in pharmacies across Northern Ireland.

Our sister titles elsewhere in the UK, meanwhile, are urging Health Secretary Matt Hancock to show far greater ambition, and urgency, than his initial promise last week to involve just 200 community outlets.

As the Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann (pictured, inset) has said, there is “no doubt that our vaccination programme is key to transforming life as we currently know it.”

The latest figures from the Stormont health department show that a total of over 58,000 first doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered to care home staff and residents as well as health service staff in Northern Ireland, with over 6,000 doses given by GPs.

Gerard Greene, the head of Community Pharmacy NI, said more than 300 local pharmacies here are already well placed to “take some of the pressure off” the health service by rolling out the vaccine.

He was speaking to the News Letter after the Department of Health at Stormont confirmed its intention to lean on the sector as the vaccination programme begins to “scale up”.

While health authorities in Northern Ireland seem determined to press ahead with their plans to include local chemists in the roll-out, the picture in other parts of the UK is less clear.

In England, the government has faced criticism that only a small number of pharmacies – just over 200 from a total of around 11,000 – have been included in the roll-out plans.

Mr Greene said: “About 400 community pharmacies are involved in the Department of Health’s flu vaccine programme, so we have established the route of the community pharmacy for vaccination services.

“The minister (Robin Swann) and the Department of Health officials have recognised that community pharmacies have a unique role to play in the coronavirus vaccination programme.

“The authorisation of the Oxford/Astra Zeneca vaccine , which doesn’t have the storage requirements [of other vaccines], means community pharmacies are ideally placed to really play a role now in rapidly vaccinating members of the population.”

He added: “We can all see the pressures that are in the health service at the minute and we can take some of that pressure off.

“Pharmacies have been the open door of healthcare accessibility throughout the pandemic. The accessibility of community pharmacies mean people will be able to either arrange or call into their local pharmacy so that we can reach more of the population.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said: “Community pharmacies in Northern Ireland will have an important part to play in the delivery of the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the coming weeks and months.

“The skills of our highly trained community pharmacy teams have already been instrumental in supporting the delivery of this year’s seasonal flu vaccination programme with over 14,000 vaccines administered to health and social care workers across Northern Ireland.

“The Covid-19 vaccination programme will be scaled up significantly and rapidly over the coming weeks as more vaccines become available, and the department is currently working with the Health and Social Care Board and Community Pharmacy Northern Ireland to put plans in place for community pharmacies to play a full and active part in meeting the major public health challenge of our time.”