Pharmacy Daily | PPA flags COVID-19 testing concerns

PHARMACY-BASED COVID-19 testing pilots in Queensland and South Australia fall short of the program they are based on, Professional Pharmacists Australia (PPA), reports.

In a statement issued on its website, PPA, said officials from both Queensland and South Australia had said the trials were being based on a similar scheme in Alberta, Canada.

"The Queensland Minister for Health, Dr Steven Miles said the government wanted to trial COVID-19 testing in pharmacies to increase testing capability in Queensland," PPA said.

"This would involve approaching people in store who were showing COVID-19 symptoms or purchasing cold and flu type products and asking them if they would like to be tested for COVID-19 by the pharmacist.

"This is how it is being trialled in South Australia.

"The Queensland proposal includes plans to move from 'opportunistic' testing to the use of pharmacies as testing centres in regions where there is widespread active community transmission."

Under the Canadian province's model patients are required to phone the pharmacy to make an appointment and are screened at that point.

"If a patient screens as being symptomatic, high-risk for previous exposure to COVID-19, or has been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient, they are referred to a government health service phone number to arrange testing at a designated testing centre, not a pharmacy," PPA said.

"The schemes being trialled in South Australia and proposed in Queensland are very different to the scheme operating in Alberta, which government officials have cited as the reason to introduce it.

"Pharmacy patients are some of the most vulnerable people in our community -- people with complex medication needs, people with multiple health issues, and the elderly who rely on medication for chronic illness and conditions.

"Pharmacies are primarily retail and health spaces that are not designed to be communicable disease testing centres.

"We do not want people who are showing COVID-19 symptoms to present to pharmacies mixing with vulnerable members of the public."

An online petition being conducted by PPA calling on the Queensland Government to scrap its plan for pharmacy-based COVID testing has received close to 500 signatures.