More community pharmacies in Wales may be used to deliver Covid boosters to help meet the Government's new vaccine targets, The Pharmacist has learned.

As it stands, very few community pharmacies in Wales are administering the booster and most Covid vaccines are being delivered through hospitals and vaccine centers.

However, according to a Welsh Government spokesperson today (14 December), health boards are working with all primary care contractors to ‘increase the number of locations from which vaccinations are available’ which ‘may include more pharmacies in some health board areas.’

They added: ‘As our vaccination programme expands rapidly more people will be able to be seen in community pharmacies.’

This comes as the Welsh Government announced this week it would offer all adults a booster before the start of January, in response to an expected wave of the Omicron variant which officials fear could overrun the NHS with new Covid cases.

A total of 30 cases of the variant have been identified so far in Wales.

In addition to increasing the number of locations to deliver the vaccine, the Government said that all available NHS staff will be immediately redeployed to vaccination centers.

In November, The Pharmacist reported that pharmacies in the Swansea Health Board had been commissioned to deliver Covid booster vaccines for the first time.

Local Health Boards in Wales have control over the vaccine programme, and each decide the level of involvement of the community pharmacy sector in their area.

In March, The Pharmacist reported that only 18 of the 713 community pharmacies in Wales had been commissioned to deliver the Covid vaccine, despite calls to boost the sector’s involvement.