Community pharmacies delivered almost half of all Covid jabs during the autumn campaign, the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) has revealed.
The figure came in response to a written question by Liberal Democrat MP Helen Morgan, who asked for the “proportion” of Covid vaccinations administered by pharmacies during the campaign, which ran from last October to the end of January.
DH parliamentary under-secretary Ashley Dalton said “approximately 45%” of Covid jabs given over the period “were administered by community pharmacies”.
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It comes as pharmacy bodies call for the expansion of pharmacy vaccine services amid the recent measles outbreak in Enfield.
National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair Olivier Picard called the outbreak “alarming” and said that the NPA has “long called for the NHS to use the extensive experience that pharmacies have delivering flu and covid vaccinations”.
“We need to work across the whole health service to perform this vital public health role, not leave it to just one small part of it,” he added.
And the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) last week wrote a letter to the Health and Social Care Committee (HSCC) urging it to “harness” pharmacies to combat poor vaccine uptake in the UK.
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The body said pharmacies have the potential to “drive vaccine coverage and uptake, especially amongst underserved communities”.
They also have “the potential to administer all adult NHS vaccination programmes”, it added, and eventually “contribute to the entire National Immunisation Programme”.
Meanwhile, the DH in January signalled their intention to allow pharmacists to deliver “any vaccine against an infectious disease caused by a virus or bacteria”.
In a consultation on the Human Medicine Regulations 2012, the government said it wanted to create a “vaccination system fit for the future”.
