Phanie - Sipa Press/Alamy Stock Photo
Community pharmacies will need to be funded for any future medicine delivery programmes caused by health crises, according to a report from the UK’s COVID-19 inquiry.
In the report published on 19 March 2026, Baroness Hallett noted community pharmacies’ role in delivering medicines to shielding populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased pharmacy workload alongside “an increase in the number of patients seeking advice for both minor and more serious conditions, a tripling of phone calls to pharmacies and a rise in the number of prescriptions being dispensed and delivered”.
“This put pharmacy teams at high risk of burn-out,” the report added.
It also highlighted that the medicines delivery scheme was announced before a plan or funding was in place, “so initial deliveries were carried out by community pharmacies as a ‘discretionary goodwill service’”.
“In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, support with medicine delivery was funded and available throughout the second wave of the [COVID-19] pandemic, but in Wales it ended on 16 August 2020 and was not reinstated,” the report said.
“[The Welsh government] had intended to use a risk analysis tool to prioritise medicine delivery if it was required after August 2020 [but] the Inquiry has seen no evidence about whether the risk analysis tool was introduced or whether the decision to end medicine delivery was revisited during subsequent [COVID-19] pandemic waves.
“It is clear that support would have been needed in Wales throughout the second wave of the [COVID-19] pandemic and so withdrawing medicine delivery in August 2020 was premature.
“The contribution of community pharmacists and the funding provided, albeit after the announcement of the scheme, were key to ensuring that clinically extremely vulnerable people could continue to access their medications without risking coming into contact with the virus.
“It is likely that funding for and support from community pharmacists will be a necessity if any future shielding programme is introduced,” Hallett added.
The report also noted the burden placed on healthcare professionals across all settings, including hospital staff caring for more patients than staffing capacity, as well as community pharmacists feeling under supported and underappreciated.
To deal with increased intensive care capacity, it said an additional 225 pharmacists per 12-hour shift would have been required.
“These additional staff did not exist. To staff these additional beds, staff-to-patient nursing ratios were stretched, intensive care staff had to work longer hours and more frequently, and other staff were redeployed … this had an inevitably damaging effect on both patients and healthcare workers,” the report added.
“Despite the running costs of community pharmacies rising over recent years, funding had not increased since 2016. The community pharmacy workforce was strained. In August 2019, there were 14,296 registered pharmacies in Great Britain. By August 2022, this number had reduced to 13,846.”
The report went on to highlight the results of a survey by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and the UK Black Pharmacist Association, published in 2020, which found that more than two-thirds of black, Asian and ethnic minority pharmacists had not had workplace risk assessments for COVID-19, while 78% of black pharmacists and pharmacy students felt that they were at risk of COVID-19 and wanted changes to be made to the way they worked.
It also said the initial exclusion of community pharmacists from the life assurance scheme for NHS frontline health and social care staff in England “made individuals working in community pharmacy who were aware of it feel like an afterthought”, which was “demotivating and demoralising for those people giving that care”.
Claire Anderson, president of the RPS, said: “Pharmacy teams were on the frontline of the [COVID-19] pandemic, but all too often were at the back of the queue when asking for support.
“With continued pressures on the health service and the whole of the workforce, it is crucial that government, the NHS, employers and others act on today’s recommendations, so that we learn from the past and build a more resilient NHS for the future.”
Henry Gregg, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association, commented: “Today’s report makes harrowing reading, and shows clearly that the health system teetered on the brink during the [COVID-19] pandemic.
“The inquiry chair is right to say that supporting the pharmacy network is a necessity to cope with any future health crisis — that process must start right now to reverse a decade of underfunding that is leaving too many pharmacies in a perilous position.
“At a time when people are rightly concerned about the current meningitis outbreak, we need to heed the lessons of the [COVID-19] pandemic and provide proper support for our pharmacy network which does much to protect our communities, during COVID[-19] and today.”
