The pharmacists’ defence association and trade union, PDA, is to urge the NHS to develop its strategy for the delivery of the second vaccination in good time and to give the role of the second vaccination of the Astra Zeneca vaccine to the national community pharmacy network as part of a collaborative and integrated NHS process.
The decision to delay the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccination to twelve weeks so that the current efforts can concentrate on giving as many people as possible a first dose of the vaccine has already resulted in more than 6 million first vaccinations being successfully delivered in one of the UK’s designated vaccinating hospitals, primary care GP hubs or in one of the large regional centres.
However, this means that in just over two months time, a large and ever-increasing cohort of the population will be due to receive its second vaccination and this will create logistical challenges to the current vaccination programme and risks slowing down the rollout of the critical first doses.
PDA to launch “A thousand little ships” policy
Individual pharmacies will never be able to deliver the high-volume vaccination operations seen in the large regional centres or the primary care hubs. However, like the large number of privately owned little ships that supported the larger Royal Navy carriers to save the lives of more than 330,000 allied soldiers from the Dunkirk beaches, they have the capacity to deliver smaller numbers that add up to a significant amount.
With the potential of vaccinations across more than 13,500 locations in the UK, this mathematical capacity, even if providing an average of only 25 vaccinations per day, per pharmacy, would be able to deliver more than 2 million vaccinations each week. This would represent a very substantial component of the overall national vaccination programme.
Working in a collaborative way and integrated within the wider NHS vaccination delivery pathway, pharmacists located in all community pharmacies delivering the second dose of the Astra Zeneca vaccine would protect the NHS by maintaining the capacity of the purpose-built, high volume hubs.
This would enable the hubs to continue at pace with the successful first vaccination programme, as well as enabling them to deliver the second more operationally complex Pfizer Biontech vaccines.
According to PDA Chairman, Mark Koziol:
“The system needs to be dynamic and the number of vaccinations delivered in each pharmacy will depend on demand and location. Some pharmacies may be able to deliver more than 80 a day, while others may only be required to deliver 8 vaccinations on two afternoons a week. This would depend on how many patients booked appointments at the pharmacy of their choice. Appointments could be organised to ensure that no vaccine was ever wasted or left unaccounted for and in a way that enables the local community pharmacy to organise the right staffing levels for their vaccine clinics.”
The PDA envisages that the community pharmacy vaccination programme could easily be built upon the existing Covid-19 vaccination service where the NHS local vaccination centres or primary care organisations would continue to be in control of the vials. The local centres would ensure that only the requisite number of vials were distributed to participating pharmacies on the specific days they were needed based on the number of appointments booked via the NHS vaccination booking system. This distribution and governance system would operate much in the same way that it currently does with the local care and residential homes.
Mark continued:
“The current GP vaccination hubs are successful because they rely on dedicated vaccinators. This means that the existing GP practice patients continue to enjoy access to their wider GP service. In our proposal, just as in the GP practice setting, the public would expect the wider community pharmacy service to continue and be delivered safely with full-time access to the community pharmacist to discuss their wider healthcare issues on an opportunistic basis. For this reason and also because the movement of the vials requires the vaccination service to be carefully structured and managed to avoid waste of vaccine, the vaccinations would have to be delivered in planned clinic sessions by a second dedicated pharmacist who comes in specifically to support the vaccination programme.”
The PDA’s “A thousand little ships” policy will be presented to governments in all four UK countries over the next few days.
You can download the England version here: PDA-Little-Ships-Initiative-ENGLAND-FINAL