Pharmacies ask to sell antigen tests without a prescription as soon as possible. Professionals offer to certify and record the results. They ask for the decree to be urgently modified to help decongest the CAP.
The pharmacies want to sell and tests of antigens of covid without prescription . They consider that in this way they could help the excessive burden of primary care centers (CAP), which with the new wave of infections are making these diagnoses and, in addition, vaccinating. Four hospitals will join the mass vaccination in the coming days, announced the Minister of Health, Josep Maria Argimon.
Barcelona’s large hospitals will vaccinate more to relieve CAPs
As recalled in a statement by the Consell de Col·legis Farmacèutics de Catalunya , currently pharmacists already have validated self-diagnostic antigen tests but they can only dispense them under medical prescription .
That is why they have demanded that the modification of Royal Decree 1662/2000 on medical devices for “In vitro” diagnosis be urgently approved , which provides that pharmacies can dispense self-diagnosis tests of the covid without a prescription. The Argimon Minister explained Wednesday in Els matins de TV3 that the Ministry of Health will have announced that this change could occur next week.
Uncertainty and helplessness
The Council of Pharmacists denounces that this ” incomprehensible scenario ” generates ” uncertainty ” in the population and ” impotence ” among the pharmaceutical community – who cannot dispense without a prescription a product that is key for screening the population, isolating positive cases and decongesting the CHAP.
The CAPs are back on the ropes due to the fifth wave of covid-19
The pharmacists have added that, in addition to selling the tests, they will also be able to register and certify the results , “deploying a validated and safe circuit that allows detecting as many cases as possible,” they clarified. And they have recalled that they have already participated on previous occasions in screenings such as that of the pharmacies of the Les Corts district of Barcelona or in the Obrir Girona clinical trial .
Industry professionals have recalled that the CAPs are “collapsed” and that, the more people pass the antigen test, “it will be easier to control the pandemic .” The tests “are an easy and fast tool in which sensitivity and specificity are two very important characteristics and they do not meet all the tests that citizens can have on the internet”, they have warned.
