COVID 19 Update Pharmacy Update - 4th March 2020

You will have seen that there has been a lot of media coverage about the Coronavirus (COVID19).

The government has been in the press explaining its action planning and preparedness of the NHS.  Pharmacy will need to be aware of its role within the plan.  Please see a summary of some of the things you will need to be aware of.

1. Pharmacy Standard Operating Procedure Document

NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) have published a new Coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance for primary care teams. This includes a specific document for community pharmacy teams, which takes the guidance already available on the GOV.UK website, but contextualises it for the community pharmacy environment.  This can be accessed by clicking the SOP link below.

Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) standard operating procedure – Community pharmacy

The guidance explains how to deal with patients presenting in the pharmacy with suspected COVID-19 infection and preparations pharmacy contractors can take to deal with such a scenario.

All pharmacy contractors should read the guidance and then undertake appropriate preparations for dealing with potentially infected patients.

The global situation with COVID-19 is changing on a daily basis and as such the UK Government’s advice to the population and healthcare providers is being updated on a very regular basis. It is therefore expected that NHSE&I will issue updates to the community pharmacy guidance and pharmacy teams should ensure they keep up to date with the latest guidance on the GOV.UK website.

2. NHS Mail & Electronic WebLinks

The NHS / Dept of Health will be comminuciating and cascading information to pharmacies via their practice NHS Email addresses.  Most pharmacies will have these in place but please make sure you are checking it on a regular bassis so you are aware of changes or actions required. 

Please be aware a lot of weblinks within the various sources of information will be changing on a regualr basis so you may need to bookmark certian sites.

3. Government Action Plan
You can access the wider government action plan by clicking here.


4. Public Health Posters
Within the standard operating procedure there is a link to obtain posters that should be used within the pharmacy.  You will need to register to download these.  It is useful for pharmacies to register  however to aid expedenicy links to download the posters direct  are provided at the bottom of this page.

5. Local Issues
Your LPC will be liasing with our contacts locally in and will keep you informaed of any local issues or information as it arises.

Two current issues we are working on is obtaining the contact information for the pharmacies that are contained in the procedure documents above and also obatining expressions of interest from  pharmacies to help with diagnostic swabbing locally.  (Seperate emails will follow  this with details.)

Please make you stay up to date by ensuring your pharmacy teams are on our email distribution list

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The Public Health posters for use in the pharmacy  can be downloaded using the links below.
 A4 size posters:
Poster for outside pharmacies
Affected countries and places poster
Northern Italian Towns poster


A3 size posters:
Poster for outside pharmacies
Affected countries and places poster
Northern Italian Towns poster