Covid vaccine rollout: Chemists brought in to fast track jabs

With Australia’s biggest city in lockdown, chemists have been brought in to fast track the Covid-19 vaccine rollout. See how you can get a jab.

Hundreds of pharmacies around the country will begin delivering Covid jabs from Monday to fast track the rollout as the nation tries to outrun the Delta variant.

To date just 49 chemists in Queensland have been given the right to offer the jabs but there will be a 700 per cent increase in pharmacies taking part in the program in the next four weeks.

Pharmacy Guild president Trent Twomey has revealed that 113 pharmacies in three states will be delivering Covid-19 shots from Monday.

By August 9 there will be 467 pharmacies delivering jabs in every state bar the ACT and Tasmania and by the end of next month there will be 1,000 on board.

“To raise vaccination rates and avoid continual lockdowns, we need all 3930 community pharmacies, that have been approved by the Government to deliver COVID-19 vaccinations,” Mr Twomey said.

“There are scores of pharmacists trained and ready to go in cities and yet Governments still insist that mass vaccination hubs are the answer”.

Trent Twomey at Alive Pharmacy at DFO. Picture: Stewart McLean

Traditionally there has been rivalry between doctors and pharmacists over vaccine delivery but the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is supportive of chemists being used to deliver the vaccines.

“Pharmacists have always been on the rollout plan and I’m looking forward to getting our whole population done so as many hands as possible to get that happening is good by me,” RACGP president Dr Karen Price said.

Pharmacists are licensed to deliver all the brands of Covid-19 vaccines but at this stage will only be offering the AstraZeneca jab.

Those wishing to get the shot at their local chemist must make an appointment because chemists will be receiving just 150 doses of vaccine per week.

Most of the pharmacies delivering vaccines in the next few weeks are in rural and regional Australia.”

“The Metropolitan pharmacies will come on board in September, October,” Mr Twomey said.

We can reveal some of the towns where chemists will be offering the shots include Taroom, Barcaldine and Bowen in Queensland.

In Victoria towns where pharmacists will be able to give the jab include Yackandandah and Beechworth.

In NSW towns where pharmacists will be able to give the jab Braidwood and Wallerang.

In South Australian towns where pharmacists will be able to give the jab Coober Pedy and Hayborough.

In WA towns where pharmacists will be able to give the jab Bakers Hill and Majimup.

In Northern Territory towns where pharmacists will be able to give the jab Alice Springs and Humpty Doo.

People who want to find out whether a chemist near them is offering the jab can search the Find a Pharmacy website from Monday which will be updated each week when new chemists come on board.

Pharmacists had delivered three million flu shots last year, were trusted vaccinators and were frustrated they were not being used more fully as part of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, Mr Twomey said.

Lack of vaccine supply was no longer a reason to limit the number of vaccine providers and state and federal governments should give the go-ahead for all pharmacies who wanted to to give the jab, he said.

“We’re not short of AstraZeneca vaccines,” he said.

“Our members are being bombarded with queries, specifically in Greater Sydney where they are in lockdown and last week in Brisbane when Brisbane went into lockdown, asking for whatever vaccine they could get”.

Chemists have been invited to take part in next week’s war gaming exercise which will work out how to ensure increased supply of vaccines in coming months make it into the arms of Australians as quickly as possible.

More pharmacists should be included in the vaccine rollout the Pharmacy Guild said. Picture: Getty

The Guild is also calling on the government to start using the existing pharmacy supply chains to deliver vaccines to chemists.

At present pharmacies can get medicine deliveries within 24 hours whereas general practitioners have been told they have to wait two weeks after they order Covid-19 vaccines before they will be delivered.

Many GP’s are refusing to offer the AstraZeneca to people aged under 60 because the government expert advisory body said Pfizer is the preferred vaccine for this group.

The Pharmacy Guild had no blanket position on this Mr Twomey said.

“There are 35,000 pharmacists in Australia so there’s 35,000, different opinions,” he said.

“So I think what will happen on the ground will be different in each circumstance because it will depend on what the pharmacist and what the patient wants and what they’re both comfortable with,” he said.