The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has asked pharmacy owners to carry out appropriate risk assessments to identify at-risk and vulnerable people within their teams including black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups during Covid-19 pandemic.
The statement from the GPhC follows Public Health England’s (PHE) report on ‘Disparities in the risk and outcomes of Covid-19’ and the recommendations set out in the second part of that report on ‘Understanding the impact of Covid-19 on BAME groups’.
Duncan Rudkin, Chief Executive of the GPhC, said: “Pharmacy owners have an important responsibility to identify and manage the risks associated with providing pharmacy services. We know that pharmacy owners and teams have already taken significant steps to reduce the risks of transmission of coronavirus to staff and patients during the pandemic.
“The report’s recommendations highlight the importance of using occupational risk assessments within the workplace to help identify and protect staff at increased risk in relation to Covid-19.”
According to the PHE study, among those already diagnosed with Covid-19, people who were 80 or older were seventy times more likely to die than those under 40.
Risk of dying among those diagnosed with Covid-19 was also higher in males than females; higher in those living in the more deprived areas than those living in the least deprived; and higher in those in BAME groups than in White ethnic groups.
These analyses take into account age, sex, deprivation, region and ethnicity, but they do not take into account the existence of comorbidities, which are strongly associated with the risk of death from Covid-19 and are likely to explain some of the differences, according to the PHE report.
“Our guidance for employers who are employing provisionally-registered pharmacists will advise that individual risk assessments to identify those at increased risk from Covid-19 should be carried out as part of the wider risk assessment before the provisionally-registered pharmacist starts work. Employers will be asked to carefully consider this information when making decisions about how to deploy provisionally-registered pharmacists,” Rudkin said.
Pharmacy owners have an important responsibility to identify and manage the risks associated with providing pharmacy services. We know that pharmacy owners and teams have already taken significant steps to reduce the risks of transmission of coronavirus to staff and patients during the pandemic, the GPhC pointed out.
