Pharmacies: The Unsung Heroes of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Alison Adduono, Director of Marketing Communications
Pharmacies played a crucial role in providing essential healthcare solutions to their communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Often located in areas easily accessible to the public, community pharmacies have become an additional and convenient avenue for Covid-19 needs. By offering services such as immunizations, Covid-19 tests, and prescription treatments, they provided an essential care resource.
One pivotal role played by pharmacies during the pandemic was offering rapid Covid-19 testing. Whether using antigen or molecular tests, they were able to provide timely results to patients looking to determine if they were infected or ensuring they were not prior to any travel, return to work, or getting together with loved ones. This service helped to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. No longer did patients need to solely rely on visiting their primary care provider, emergency room, or urgent care clinic for a vaccination, test, or prescription. Going forward, they will continue to be key providers keeping communities safe from COVID-19 and future public health crises.
Photo Credit: iStock by Getty Images
Those of us stricken with seasonal ailments (runny noses, coughs, sore throats) may be wondering if our discomfort is allergies, a cold, flu, RSV or Covid-19. Either way, many of us will take the first step to wellness at the local pharmacy as we search for over the counter “cure-alls” or medications such as cold medicine, cough syrup, or lozenges and stock up on Kleenex to make us feel a little more normal. Getting a quick Covid-19 test while at the pharmacy completely makes sense while you are there. You may even get a prescription before you leave the facility.
While the federal government did resume their free at-home test program, each household is limited to 4 free tests and individuals may burn those up quickly. Granted, antigen tests can provide rapid results in around 15 minutes, but they also have an increased potential for false negatives due to a lower viral load. If an individual is questioning a negative at-home test result or they are out of tests, a convenient solution would be to head to a local pharmacy for a more sensitive rapid molecular test (such as RT-PCR or RT-LAMP) and know for sure.
The AscencioDx® Covid-19 Test and Molecular Detector is an ideal solution for pharmacy settings. Not only is it affordable, but it is highly accurate providing actionable test results in as little as 20 minutes – that’s a lot faster than waiting in an urgent care or waiting for a PCR lab result to come back. The test’s design is extremely resilient towards mutations of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, routine Quality Control testing has shown that it remains robust in its variant detection currently detecting 99.99% of all known Covid-19 variants. The re-usable system is small and portable requiring extraordinarily little counter space. With no contract or purchase minimums, the AscencioDx will fit into your workflow even when Covid-19 testing levels are seasonally down.
For pharmacies looking to add the AscencioDx platform to their Covid-19 test offerings, we have an introductory starter package. Contact our sales department at sales@anavasidx.com to learn more.
Additional Resources:
Where Speed, Efficiency, & Accuracy Align
The AscencioDx® Covid-19 Test and The AscencioDx® Molecular Detector have not been FDA cleared or approved, but have been authorized for emergency use by FDA under an EUA for use by authorized laboratories. This product has been authorized only for the detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2, not for any other viruses or pathogens. The emergency use of this product is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of in vitro diagnostics for detection and/or diagnosis of COVID-19 under Section 564(b)(1) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(b)(1), unless the declaration is terminated or authorization is revoked sooner.