Thank Your Local Pharmacist

Jeff Green | Mar 17, 2021

Last Friday morning, I strolled over to the Sharbot Lake Pharmasave to get a shot of AstraZeneca. 

There were no crowds. Pharmacy staff were using the day as a soft launch of their vaccine protocols. They were learning how to input data into the new provincial system, and how to handle the vaccination, (the easy part), and the wait time in a very small space, all the pharmacy was serving other clients.

They were happy and excited to get the pilot underway. They planned to move the vaccination to the Sharbot Lake Legion on Saturday and Monday to free up the pharmacy and make it easier to vaccinate a good chunk of people

I was in and out and on my way quickly.

Things have changed since then, both for the vaccine and the pharmacy, which is one of four in the Frontenac News distribution area that have taken on the task of vaccinating 500 people with AstraZeneca over the next three weeks.

Everything ha become more complicated for the pharmacies. For one thing, the plan to set up offsite clinics had to be abandoned. The Ministry of Health, who are over-seeing the pharmacy pilot project with AstraZeneca, for 60-64 year old people only, informed the pharmacies that are taking part in the pilot project that they must deliver the vaccines only at their own premises.

This nixed plans for clinics at more suitable local locations, for Sharbot Lake Pharmasave , Tobia's Northbrook Guardian Pharmacy, and Inverary Pharmasave as well.

Three of the four pharmacies in our region are using the same online Medmeapp system to book times for vaccination. Again, in order to comply with provincial government rules, those online booking systems are open to all Ontarians of the correct age. This means that people are free to travel from regions where COVID-19 levels are higher than KFL&A, into our region, to get a vaccine.

While we hope that  people who are traveling to our communities for their shots are being careful, the directive from public health that has been in place for months has not changed, travel between regions that are in different colour coded COVID-19 zones is discouraged.

“Stay home and stay safe” is not consistent with travel from Orange and Red zones like Ottawa and Toronto to  Green  zones like Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington, yet that is what the pharmacy based pilot is essentially promoting.

At the same time, AstraZeneca has been making conflicting headlines of its own. 

In Europe country after country is pausing the use of  the AstraZeneca  vaccine to investigate reports about blood clots in people who were given shots over the last few weeks. Officials have made it clear that they do not think the blood clots, which have been fatal in very few cases, were caused by the vaccine, but they are making sure.

In Canada, from the Prime Minister on down, officials have said the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and they are not planning to stop administering it. They point out that the AstraZeneca vaccine that has been shipped to Canada is from a different batch from the vaccine that is under investigation.

On Tuesday morning, AstraZeneca received a further boost in Canada. It was approved for use in all age groups, which has made the pharmacy pilot a real outlier. The 60-64 year old cohort for the pilot. were only targeted because the AstraZeneca vaccine had been restricted to those under 65. It is very unlikely this change will have an impact on the pilot project, but it certainly complicates an already complicated situation.

This is occurring as a race between vaccination and COVID-19 variants appears to be heating up.

Just as the good news about vaccination rolling out across Ontario is coming, so is the news about increased infection rates and the onset of variants of concern.

The pharmacists  in Inverary, Harrowsmith, Sharbot Lake, and Northbrook and their staff stepped forward to help their communities. They did not sign up in order to bring people from outside their region into their small, but efficient, pharmacy spaces, but that is what has happened. They are juggling their existing work load with the extra task of vaccinating people safely. All of this without the benefit of the kind of support staff that mass clinics and Family Health Team based vaccine rollouts have been able to use. A lot of work and a lot of stress is being placed on their shoulders, and it does not help that the rules they are expected to follow keep changing. 

The pharmacists who are doing this are small business owners. They are serving their communities and trying to make a living at the same time.

So let's make this “be kind to your local pharmacist week”