Leeds chemist prepared to administer Covid-19 vaccine to help fight against coronavirus

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was confident of the involvement of 200 pharmacy sites in the jabs programme, which could be expanded further depending on how the rollout progresses.

But the chief executive of the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies said that with some 11,500 community pharmacy sites in England, there could be much more use made of the services.

Today the Yorkshire Evening Post and its sister titles across the UK today challenge Boris Johnson to ensure that every citizen is only a short walk away from a vaccine centre.

We are urging the Government to deploy the country’s network of 11,000 pharmacies as front-line Covid vaccine centres as part of that.

Dozens of small and medium-sized pharmacies in Leeds could be utilised to speed up the coronavirus vaccination rollout, experts have said.

Daniel Brash, a community pharmacist and co-director of Mitchells Pharmacy at Horsforth, said: “From my perspective we are quite used to giving vaccines, we have been doing quite a lot of flu jabs and when it was not Covid times we did a lot of travel vaccinations. We are quite experienced in giving vaccinations and I would be interested in ramping it up to administer the Covid vaccine.

“There are different types of Covid vaccine. The first one (Pfizer) requires very, very cold storage, minus 70 degrees, which logistically and practically is quite an issue.

“It would not be suitable unless we could administer very large quantities. With the AstraZeneca, it is two to eight degrees and a normal fridge so that is feasible. It would be easier for us to go with AstraZeneca, we have a special pharmacy fridge and track temperature readings throughout the day.

“Our customers are asking all the time, all the time. They are asking lots of questions and asking us ‘if you get some will you please let us know’. They would rather have it done here.

"There are concerns about patients having to queue up outside, which is not practical so if we can do intermittently and not a certain volume - AstraZeneca is similar in terms of the flu jab storage and we take it out as and when we need it.”

Some pharmacists have also raised concerns over why an online pharmacy group has been chosen to partner with Morrisons supermarket, which has offered its car park spaces to assist with the roll-out.