Funding will be key to any future shielding programme, Covid Inquiry finds

Funding for, and support from community pharmacists, will be a necessity if any future shielding programme is introduced, the third module of the Covid-19 inquiry has said.

In the report of the impact of the pandemic on healthcare systems, Module 3, Inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett said the contribution of community pharmacists and the funding provided during the pandemic were key to ensuring access to medicines for clinically extremely vulnerable people.

The report estimates that there were around 400,000 medicine deliveries in England during the first month of the pandemic, and that initial medicine home deliveries made before government funding, were carried out as a “discretionary goodwill service”.

It also notes the absence of evidence for the use of risk analysis to prioritise medicine delivery and it concluded that withdrawing medicine delivery in Wales in August 2020 was premature.

Patients told the Inquiry that pharmacies had “80 or 90 people queuing” during the pandemic. The report also notes that the shielding programme, as well as a rise in the number of prescriptions being dispensed and delivered, also increased the workload of community pharmacies. “Despite the running costs of community pharmacies rising over recent years, funding had not increased since 2016,” Baroness Hallett says.

The report also notes the additional workload and changes to GPs’ working practice, such as the increased use of technology to enable remote consultations. The report also notes that general practice was already in a precarious position prior to the pandemic due to rising numbers of health conditions per person and an insufficient number of GPs. Inquiry Chair Baroness Hallett concluded: “We coped, but only just. Healthcare systems were overwhelmed and came close to collapse.”

Commenting, King’s Fund Director of Policy, Events and Partnerships Siva Anandaciva said that the Government has still not made a clear case for how the current restructure sets the NHS up for future success, or how the restructure would address the problems outlined in the Module 3 report.

Module 3 of the Covid-19 inquiry opened in November 2022.

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