The national COVID-19 vaccination rollout has failed, and failed miserably, the National President of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Trent Twomey, said today.
Adjunct Professor Twomey said this failure was threatening the health of communities across the whole country.
"And rather than do something to fix the problem today we have the Government announcing it is sending millions of doses of the vaccine to Pacific nations. Of course we must support our neighbours but first we have to get our own house in order.
"It is bewildering to see the Government happy to give away doses of the vaccine when it can't even successfully organise to get the vaccine to its own people across Australia."
Adjunct Professor Twomey said the answer to fixing the Government's rollout debacle lay in community pharmacies.
"More than 3,900 pharmacies have been approved to administer these vaccines, but the Government is sitting on its hands and so far have only brought a handful of these pharmacies into the rollout, and those are only in regional areas," he said.
"It's time the Governments was held to account.
"The use of community pharmacies in the vaccination rollout is a simple and easy fix, and it's one that's already been approved by Government. But the roadblock seems to be faceless bureaucrats.
"You only have to look at the United States where 95 million of the total 360 million vaccinations have been administered by pharmacists. Not surprisingly, the US is getting people vaccinated at a rapid rate with the help of pharmacies and this is helping to get the country back to normal."
He said the Guild had estimated that utilising community pharmacies in stages could speed up the vaccination rollout by at least three months, protecting population health, enabling the economy to avoid further lockdowns and saving taxpayers money.
"But instead of acting the Government is hiding behind what we see as flawed advice from the bureaucracy," he said.
"This appalling situation can be fixed. It must be fixed.
"The questions that need answering are: Why won't governments onboard pharmacies that their own health departments have approved to do the job? What do we need to do to shake them out of their stupor? What will it take to end this game of pass the blame and for governments to simply get on with the job?"
