Warning that vaccine appointments will be cancelled if vital equipment fails to arrive
Pharmacies could be forced to cancel hundreds of Covid vaccination appointments due to crucial equipment failing to arrive.
Bosses say vaccination sites across the region were not only faced with limited supplies of the jab, but also lacked the basic equipment to deliver it, including PPE, emergency kit and syringes.
Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth MP said he plans to raise the issue with Ministers, and was "looking for guarantees" that a plan was in place to ensure no vaccination site is delayed in rolling out the jab due to failures in the delivery of equipment.
Knights Pharmacy group – which has pharmacies across the West Midlands – has four vaccination sites launching in the coming weeks, including one today.
The group's superintendent pharmacist, Mo Kolia, said he was concerned that appointments would have to be cancelled if sites were not equipped with the right gear.
He said the group had already stepped in to support another site that had not received its delivery of consumables, and added: "Now we're in a similar position because we are going live.
"There are hundreds of appointments that potentially have to be cancelled if consumables supply doesn't arrive on time.
"This is keeping me awake every night because we have four sites that are going live in the next few weeks, and we still haven't received all of our consumables yet."
Mr Ashworth said: "This is clearly an issue. The failure to provide NHS staff with PPE at the beginning of this crisis was a scandal.
"The last thing we want is for this to go wrong in the second wave with the vaccination roll out.
"This is not just about the delivery of the doses... it's about all the paraphernalia that goes alongside it to ensure safe roll out of the vaccination, so we can be sure that that injection going into the arm, that process of inoculation, is done safely.
Mr Ashworth, who chaired a virtual meeting with community pharmacists from the Black Country, has called for them to have a greater role in the vaccine roll out.
"We should really be making much better use of community pharmacies across the country," he said, adding that many people "hugely rely" on community pharmacies, particularly in "harder to reach" communities.
Community pharmacies have played only a small role in the vaccine roll out so far, with the Government initially focusing on mass delivery sites.
Stephen Noble, chief executive officer at Dudley Local Pharmaceutical Committee, said it was a "slap in the face" that the role of community pharmacies had been minimised.
Oldbury-based pharmacist Zulfikar Jalal said there were gaps in the vaccination programme, and that community pharmacies had the right infrastructure in place to play a key role in delivery.
He said: "For a lot of housebound patients, only the pharmacy has provided them with services such as flu vaccinations. At the moment they are being left out, because either they cannot get to the mass vaccination site, or they are not on the list."
