PHARMACISTS in Malaysia have offered to help the country get as many people inoculated against the COVID-19 pandemic, and as soon as possible. This is an excellent idea that the Government should consider, as this would help the country achieve herd immunity faster.
This would be taking a leaf out of the US’ book. About 41% of the American population has completed two doses, with an average of 1.7 million doses administered daily.
One significant contributor to the good numbers is the fact that President Joe Biden’s administration has started shipping vaccine doses directly to pharmacies.
Other countries – the UK, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, among many others – have also done the same.
Indeed, with coordinating minister of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) Khairy Jamaluddin aiming to deliver 200,000 doses daily by July, it looks like we are going to need all the help that we can get.
So why not make use of what we already have, which is, according to statistics, 5,000 pharmacists serving in around 3,200 community pharmacies throughout the country, and 21,000 active registered pharmacists?
It is no secret that the country is being held back by myriad issues, chief among them are the availability of vaccines, insufficient personnel and vaccination centres, and also the populace’s registration rate. Thus, the offer for pharmacists to help comes at a very opportune time.
In this case, the Government should start small by targeting selected community pharmacies first in order to gauge the populace’s interest in the idea.
If the idea of having pharmacists administering the vaccines is well-received, then the authorities can consider roping in the big pharmacy chains to help out as well.
The fact that every neighbourhood has at least one community pharmacy and this would eliminate the need for people in the neighbourhood to travel far to get inoculated.
Seeing as to how people did not show up to receive their shots recently due to the lack of transport, getting community pharmacies to help out sounds like a plausible idea.
As of June 18, approximately 5.5 million people in Malaysia have been fully vaccinated, and we have reached an important milestone by crossing the 200,000 mark on the daily shots administered on June 15.
Not to sound like the voice of doom, but we are still far from the finish line, and need to go all to catch up. The pharmacists have already expressed their willingness to help speed up the vaccination process, so why not let them? – June 20, 2021
