'We could easily give the vaccine' say Scarborough pharmacists, but the Government won't let them yet...

So says Lisa Kellett, Pharmacy Manager at Barrowcliff Pharmacy, who added: “I’m quite prepared to give the vaccine, we just haven’t had ours yet unfortunately!

“It’s so important that local pharmacies can give the vaccines because we’re easy to access, the only problem with small pharmacies are our space restrictions, but we’ve done really well with the flu vaccine, I’ve done about 200 to 300 flu vaccines and it’s been really successful.

“We could do exactly the same thing with the Covid jabs as long as it’s the one we could store.

“It’s a service that we could easily provide.”

She said that pharmacies always get left behind and forgotten about by the Government, but pharmacists are the ones who give everyday medicines to everybody in the community.

We could definitely administer a couple of hundred coronavirus vaccines every week,” she said.

So far, around 200 pharmacy sites in England including branches of high street chain Boots are lined up to start delivering jabs to priority patient groups in the coming weeks, but there are calls to greatly expand this.

On Monday, JPI Media, the parent company of The Scarborough News, launched a national campaign calling on the Government to give the coronavirus vaccine from all pharmacies where it is safe to do so, in addition to those on the high street.

Sign our petition to include community pharmacies in Covid vaccine rolloutOluwone Ajayi, a pharmacist in Scarborough, said whilst it may not be suitable for every pharmacy, the Government is not currently using the best way to deliver vaccines, which he says is pharmacies.

“I think it’s a good idea for pharmacies to be giving the coronavirus vaccines because of access. Patients have more access to pharmacies compared to other healthcare organisations.”

Ian Dean, CEO of Community Pharmacy North Yorkshire, said: “The approval of a second vaccine, and one that has less complex handling characteristics to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, is a positive step.

"The rollout of the vaccination programme will not be without its challenges, but community pharmacists and their teams are used to overcoming hurdles to provide the best care to their patients, so we believe their skills should be used by the NHS to help administer the tens of thousands of vaccinations that will be needed to help North Yorkshire escape from the grip of the pandemic.”