The Government has been urged to accelerate plans to include pharmacy technicians on the list of healthcare professionals able to vaccinate patients under a patient group direction.

In an open letter to health secretary Sajid Javid yesterday, the Company Chemists’ Association and Association of UK Pharmacy Technicians said pharmacy technicians have “played a vital role” in pharmacy-led vaccination centres and can help meet the Government’s ramped-up targets for booster jabs.

The organisations said a “simple change” to PGD eligibility will allow them to do more “while also helping to boost capacity in a community pharmacy”.

Liz Fider, President of APTUK said: “Pharmacy Technicians as registered healthcare professionals are ready to support mass vaccination at scale. Enabling them to increase capacity in community pharmacies by providing additional vaccinators able to use their skills for optimum patient and community benefit.

“Legislation must be enabled to let the profession assist at this time of urgency. Our offer to support remains and we are committed to ensuring the profession is enabled”.

CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said: “Community pharmacy stands ready to turbo-charge the rollout of the Covid-19 booster, having already delivered 15m vaccines so far and a record-breaking number of flu jabs this winter.

“The Government now needs to ensure that community pharmacy has the capacity and capability to do so.

“A small technical legal change such as this will help remove one more barrier to a successful booster programme. We remain committed to working with Government to ensure this happens”.