By Estelle Yau
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in December, pharmacists worldwide keep performing frontline roles along with other healthcare professionals. All around the world, pharmacists have had many roles, responsibilities, and duties throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
As an essential service, community pharmacies remain open to provide patient care and service safely and effectively amidst pandemic and lockdowns. During the second wave, pharmacists continue ensuring a stable supply of drugs and medicines and providing new medicine refill services, such as home delivery of pharmaceuticals for the patients most at risk, or direct supply through community pharmacies instead of hospital pharmacies. Community pharmacists were dispensing up to a third more prescriptions during the first wave.
Pharmacists especially working in hospitals also had to find alternative sources of some medicines as they were experiencing a medicine shortage due to the extraordinary demand of COVID-19 patients. Hospitals stocked up on drugs in an effort to avoid a new drug shortage during the second wave of the virus.
Pharmacists were authorized to prepare hand and surface disinfectants due to a shortage of these products at the beginning of the outbreak. Pharmacists had to find alternative sourcing, strength, generic, or perform therapeutic substitution, and prepare compounded formulations at the pharmacy to anticipate and manage drug shortages.
Also, pharmacists working in pharmaceuticals keep conducting research with doctors in order to supply the market with medication to treat COVID -19.
Pharmacists continue to play a significant role in communicating reliable information yet understandable by the patients and the wider population in order to control the outbreak and as new and more contagious strains have begun to spread all around the world.
They support governments for disseminating information on precautions related to COVID-19 spread such as handwashing technique, proper use, and disposal of face masks. Additionally, to offering their expertise in medicines and drug-drug interactions, the pharmacist workforce expands its public health role, by actively engaging in enhancing community health and wellbeing such as helping patients manage mental health problems which numbers have grown amidst the pandemic, especially with the experience of a second wave. With the particular ease in accessibility, community pharmacies continue to have a unique role in safeguarding patients who are at risk of neglect and assisting many victims of domestic abuse due to new lockdown and quarantine periods that are observed to counter the second wave.
Similar to in other sectors, the use of technological and digital tools rapidly increased in the healthcare sector to minimize physical contact in case of suspected and confirmed COVID cases. With the overall decrease of in-person physician consultations (an increase of online video or phone calls).
The role of a pharmacist grows as they remain one of the most accessible health care professionals in the second wave.
Electronic prescriptions made medicines management quicker, safer, and easier for millions of patients. Pharmacies have to support remote dispensing of prescriptions, collaborating with the national health system, general practitioners, and other relevant specialists.
Further to their role in monitoring and surveillance of adverse reactions of drugs and medicines, pharmacists are also helping in reporting and referring suspected COVID-19 cases.
In some countries, pharmacists are engaged in activities, such as COVID-19 screening and testing, interpretation of lab results for COVID-19. Besides regular point-of-care testing, patients can go to their community pharmacies and get tested in a timely manner.
Clinical pharmacists have played a key role to facilitate the investigation of new drugs in controlled studies for the prophylaxis and the treatment of COVID-19 and to assess patients eligible for new agents via compassionate use.
In some countries, community pharmacists are already supporting vaccinations in their local communities, especially by administering flu vaccines. With the approval and launch of several vaccines this year, community pharmacies will be needed in supporting the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines quickly and safely and expanding to a population-wide coverage.
References
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