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Pharmacists felt “underappreciated” because they were “not treated in the same way” as other healthcare professionals by the then Conservative Government during the Covid pandemic, the inquiry into the crisis has concluded.

In her 404-page report published yesterday, the Covid-19 inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett said healthcare systems across the UK “only just” coped with the pandemic and “teetered on the brink of collapse on a number of occasions”.

She paid tribute to the “almost superhuman efforts of healthcare workers and all the staff” working in those systems and reserved a section in her report highlighting the impact of the crisis on pharmacists.

Pharmacies, Baroness Hallett said, experienced a huge increase in workload as patients flocked to them for medicines, referencing a workforce and wellbeing survey by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society which showed about 95 per cent of pharmacists in England, Scotland and Wales were “at high risk of burn-out”.

I did not have a day off that year

The inquiry heard “there were days when there were 80 or 90 people queuing outside the pharmacy”.

Pharmacist Jonathan Rees, who ran two pharmacies in Wales during the pandemic, told the inquiry he regularly worked several hours’ overtime each day and his pharmacy stayed open seven days a week. “Every single day of the year, I did not have a day off in that period,” he said.

Baroness Hallett said: “During the pandemic, community pharmacies experienced an increase in the number of patients seeking advice for both minor and more serious conditions, a tripling of phone calls to pharmacies, and a rise in the number of prescriptions being dispensed and delivered.

“The shielding programme also increased the workload of community pharmacies. In April 2020, pharmacies in England began delivering medicines to the shielded population as part of an NHS England service. Similar schemes operated in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

‘Demotivating and demoralising’ for pharmacists

She also said the Conservatives’ decision to initially exclude pharmacists from the Covid life assurance scheme left them feeling “like an afterthought, which was demotivating and demoralising for those people giving that care”.

The scheme, introduced on April 27, 2020, made £60,000 available to the estate of a healthcare worker who died from the virus as long as they met the criteria.

Henry Gregg, the chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association which gave evidence to the inquiry, urged Labour to “act immediately” on the inquiry’s recommendations which included creating infection prevention and control guidance and providing psychological and emotional support for healthcare workers.

“(The) report makes harrowing reading and shows clearly that the health system teetered on the brink during the pandemic,” he said.

“The inquiry chair is right to say that supporting the pharmacy network is a necessity to cope with any future health crisis – that process must start right now to reverse a decade of underfunding that is leaving too many pharmacies in a perilous position.

“The testimony of NPA members and others in this report shows that pharmacies played a heroic role against the odds to maintain medicine supply and expand vaccination services during the pandemic and need support and funding so they are always there to serve in the future.”