Sheffield pharmacies 'ready to give Covid vaccinations and help pull England out of lockdown sooner'

They have urged NHS chiefs to get pharmacies, which are used to vaccinating thousands of people against flu each year, the role in the mass coronavirus vaccination programme for which their experience has prepared them.

Hospitals and GP practices are already administering the vaccines but only larger pharmacies have so far been approved by NHS England to do so – something pharmacists in Sheffield say must change.

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Claire Thomas, chief officer of Community Pharmacy Sheffield, said some pharmacies within South Yorkshire had previously expressed an interest in giving Covid vaccinations but none had been asked by NHS England to do so.

However, she said that was when just the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which must be stored at around -70C and is harder to prepare, had been approved for use in the UK.

Now that both the Oxford/AstraZenaca and Moderna vaccines have also been given the go-ahead, she claimed it would be much easier for pharmacies across Sheffield and beyond to play their part in protecting the nation.

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"There are 123 pharmacies in Sheffied and the majority of those offer the national flu vaccination service and would be ready to go if they were asked to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine,” she said.

"A key thing for me is the accessibility of community pharmacies, which have been open and offering support throughout the pandemic, because many people can walk there and wouldn’t have to take public transport and risk getting the virus.

"Pharmacies want to play their part in helping to get the most vulnerable people vaccinated as quickly as possible.

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"The more vaccination sites we have and the better the accessibility, the quicker we will hopefully be out of lockdown.”

David Russell is chairman of Community Pharmacy Sheffield and runs the Well pharmacy in Grenoside.

He explained that when offers of interest were initially invited, pharmacies had to commit to operating 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and to giving around 1,000 jabs every three days – something only the larger ones could achieve without taking on extra staff.

But he claimed that with more ‘user friendly’ vaccines now coming onstream, smaller pharmacies were ‘well-placed’ to get involved.

"My pharmacy’s delivered more than 1,000 flu vaccinations so far this year and it would have been a lot more had we had a more steady supply,” he said.

"I can’t see any reason, other than possibily the availability of the vaccines, that pharmacies like ours couldn’t make a significant impact in terms of the number of Covid vaccinations being administered."

Mr Russell added that patients were expecting pharmacies to offer Covid jabs and some pharmacists were already vaccinating people at the hubs which have been set up at GP surgeries across the city.

He said that there were around 11,000 pharmacies across the country and if each could do just 20 vaccines a day, five days a week, they could have a big impact.

“The rhetoric coming out of the Government is that the quicker we get people vaccinated, the sooner we can think about easing restrictions,” he said.

“I’m poised and ready to be able to do it, as are many other pharmacies in Sheffield.”