July 2, 2025

COVID VACCINATIONS

MOIC were commissioned by the Department of Health (DH) to undertake an initial rapid review to capture changes to pharmacy services that were implemented during the first wave of the COVID-19 response. This report documented a range of interventions made by pharmacy teams in order to maintain access by patients and the public to medicines and pharmaceutical care during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report made a number of recommendations for actions needed to prepare for future waves of the pandemic and inform changes needed to support the longer term rebuilding of HSC services.

 

Subsequently, pharmacy continued to adapt and played a vital role throughout the duration of the pandemic, including the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination and therapeutic agents. As such further reports were commissioned in order to identify new working practices, challenges, enablers and lessons learned across the different pharmacy service areas.

 

Three key areas were included in the reviews:

• Phase 1: Recommendations made in the Rapid Review of Pharmacy Services in response to COVID-19 (published by MOIC in September 2020)
• Phase 2: Pharmacy input into COVID-19 vaccination services
• Phase 3: Pharmacy input into rollout of novel COVID-19 therapeutics