The community pharmacy home delivery service in England has been further extended for people who have been told to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace, NHS England and Improvement (NHSE&I) has confirmed.
Related Article: Community pharmacies can provide HPV vaccination from 2026
In a letter sent to pharmacy contractors this week (29 September), NHSE&I said the service will now run until 31 March 2022.
‘Pharmacies and dispensing doctors across England will be required to ensure those people who have been notified by NHS Test and Trace to self-isolate can receive their prescription medicines and appliances by home delivery during the ten-day self-isolation period if they are unable to arrange for medicines to be picked up,’ the letter explained.
This comes as over 36,000 people in the UK tested positive for Covid-19 on one day (30 September) and over 246,000 people tested positive over the past week – a 6% increase from the previous week.
Related Article: Starmer touts pharmacy-led weight loss jab drive in 10-year plan speech
Contractors can claim payment for the delivery of medicines to clinically extremely vulnerable patients under the Community Pharmacy Home Delivery Service on the Manage Your Service (MYS) portal.
The pandemic delivery service came to an end for clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) patients in March after many lockdown restrictions were lifted and the group were told they no longer had to shield.
Related Article: Pharmacies’ clinical services offering to expand under NHS 10-year plan
NHS England and NHS Improvement relaunched the pandemic delivery service — which was due to end on 19 February — in January, after the Government announcement of the commencement of a new national lockdown in England.
Have your say
Please add your comment in the box below. You can include links, but HTML is not permitted. Please note that comments are not moderated before publication and the views expressed are those of the user and do not reflect the views of The Pharmacist. Remember that submission of comments is governed by our Terms and Conditions. You can also read our full guidelines on article comments here – but please be aware that you are legally liable for any libellous or offensive comments that you make. If you have a complaint about a comment or are concerned that a comment breaches our terms and conditions, please use the ‘Report this comment’ function to alert our web team.