The Pharmacy Guild of Australia is redoubling action to promote COVID-19 vaccinations through community pharmacies, nationwide. Guild National President Trent Twomey says at least 3,600 pharmacies are offering COVID vaccinations and this number continues to grow.
Already more than 3,100 pharmacies have ordered Moderna stock, for Australians aged 12 and over.
Addressing a recent Guild webinar, he said a major new marketing campaign had already drawn 10 million visits to the Guild Find a Pharmacy website.
Alongside this, 17 national, state or corporate organisations were already signed onto the Guild’s corporate vaccinations program, offering easy-to-use portals to consolidate paperwork and simplify the task for an employee to obtain their vaccination – keeping themselves, others, the broader public – and especially their fellow employees in the workplace – safe and able to work under closer to normal conditions.
Webinar guest, Federal Health Department Deputy Secretary and TGA head Adjunct Professor John Skerritt, said the power of vaccines was clearly evident. He recounted that last year Australia had 29,000 COVID cases and 910 deaths, while in 2021 the fatality rate from 87,000 cases was running at one-sixth the fatality rate of 2020.
Explaining the complexity of vaccination molecules, Professor Skerritt said the TGA was working as far ahead of trends as it could. The TGA has already signed off next year’s flu vaccine composition.
He said average daily new cases of COVID across Australia were low by international comparison. Across the last week of September, Australia recorded 1,849 new COVID cases; UK 34,254; and America 108,139 new cases.
Rapid Antigen Test kits will be available through pharmacies from November 2021. Professor Skerritt noted RA Tests were already used in some care sectors and some workplaces, and work was underway to ensure they would be reliable and useful in homes.
Kits were already available in Australia but typically in batches of 20, 30 or 40 at a cost of several hundred dollars, so more work was needed to ensure RA Test kits would meet individual consumer demand.
It was important results could be communicated to healthcare professionals. State and Territory Governments remained keen to know test numbers and results, at least at this time, Professor Skerritt said.
