Cumbrian pharmacies inundated with calls for lateral flow tests

Cumbrian pharmacies have not been immune to what appears to be a nation-wide shortage of lateral flow tests.

Pharmacists across the county have said that the combination of people wanting to safely meet up with friends and family and a limit on ordering tests has led to a perfect storm.

Pharmacy manager at Moorclose Pharmacy in Workington, Debbie Hallsworth said that the usually quiet festive period has turned into one of their busiest of the year.

"Between Christmas and New Year is our quiet week and it was still our quiet week last year. This year we have not been able to breath," she said.

"We are only allowed to order one box of kits a day. It depends which company they send it from, but it's about 54 to 55 test kits a day and as you can imagine, that goes within about an hour."

Ms Hallsworth said staff members have abuse for there not being any test kits at the pharmacy.

She added: "It's just adding to the abuse that we are getting on a daily basis because prescriptions aren't ready in time because they are taking longer to get to us."

Pharmacist at Dalston Pharmacy in Carlisle, Mark Stakim, said he understood why the demand for tests had gone up, but conceded that it is "fairly unique" in terms of what they have had to deal with during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said: "Probably 90 per cent of the phone calls that we have had have been to see if we have had lateral flow tests in stock and most of the time we have been able to say yes we do.

"It has been busy."

The pharmacy had a 24-hour "outage", when they had no test kits available between December 29 and 30.

Mr Stakim added: "Understandably people wanted to spend Christmas with friends and family and make sure everyone was safe, so the demand was higher than it has ever been all the way through the pandemic.

"Obviously the system didn't quite predict how much the demand would go up."