Pharmacies will play key role in vaccine roll out, Health Secretary insists
The Health Secretary has insisted that pharmacies will play a key role in the UK's vaccine roll out.
Labour has called for community pharmacies to be "at the heart" of delivering the jab, saying they will reach hard-to-reach communities that mass vaccination centres won't.
Matt Hancock was challenged over the issue in the Commons by Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth, who raised a meeting he had attended with pharmacists in Dudley.
Mr Ashworth said up to 30,000 pharmacists could be used to help deliver the vaccine. "We should be using them not just because of the volumes of doses they can administer, but because they have years of experience of building trust and vaccine acceptability within hard-to-reach groups and minority ethnic communities," he said.
"I was speaking to pharmacists in Dudley who were telling me this. They also, by the way, raised concerns about the wider supply of the consumables needed to administer the vaccine."
Mr Hancock said: "Absolutely, pharmacies are going to be incredibly important, especially for reaching into those communities that may be otherwise harder to reach.
"The NHS as a whole is highly respected and trusted in all communities of this country so is well placed to do that, and pharmacy colleagues within the NHS particularly so, because they are often the closest to their communities.
"As I have set out, we have opened 65 vaccination centres that are pharmacy-led this week, with more to come."
Mr Hancock did not address concerns raised over shortages in "wider kit" such as PPE and syringes.
