AN Ararat pharmacist says his business is ready and willing to begin COVID-19 vaccinations if and when the supply shortage is fixed.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, it was announced eight rural and remote community pharmacies in Victoria have been activated in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout including Dimboola, Buninyong and Beechworth.<\/p>\n
The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia has welcomed the use of pharmacies to administer vaccines, but says more work is needed for the program to be rolled out on a wide scale.<\/p>\n
Ararat Pharmasave Pharmacist, Jason Hosemans, said his team has been ready to administer vaccinations for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re happy to be involved in the rollout it\u2019s just a question of being authorised or enabled to do so. But we\u2019re here, ready and willing,\u201d Mr Hosemans said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already do influenza vaccinations, we\u2019ve done about 500 of them this season and certainly we get asked every day when are we going to do (COVID) vaccinations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe demand is there. The East Grampians Health Service and medical centre are doing a pretty good job but we\u2019re ready and able to help top up when required,\u201d Mr Hosemans said.<\/p>\n
National President Pharmaceutical Society of Australia. Associate Professor Chris Freeman, said his organisation was working with the Victorian Government to secure maximal pharmacist involvement in the vaccination strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity pharmacists have been vaccinating against influenza since 2014, and PSA is glad to see that the same process is now being applied to combatting coronavirus,\u201d Mr Jackson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a start \u2013 but on-boarding less than a dozen local pharmacies in regional areas simply isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state is currently in the midst of yet another outbreak, therefore, utilising community pharmacists at this juncture is imperative to protecting Victorians. Activate the full pharmacist workforce now,\u201d Mr Jackson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need Victoria to follow New South Wales\u2019 lead on this, by making all COVID 19 vaccines available through local pharmacies. All Australians should have the option to go to their local pharmacist for their vaccine because it is so easy and simple to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Hosemans said it was frustrating that the rollout of vaccines through local pharmacies hasn\u2019t arrived in Ararat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to speed out the rollout which is what we all need, get the vaccination percentages up so we can get life back to normal. The sooner we get it done the better and we are certainly in a position to help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AN Ararat pharmacist says his business is ready and willing to begin COVID-19 vaccinations if and when the supply shortage is fixed. Earlier this week, it was announced eight rural and remote community pharmacies in Victoria have been activated in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout including Dimboola, Buninyong and Beechworth. The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-5t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}