Pharmacies are wanting greater clarity on when they are able to sell rapid antigen tests (RATs) to the general public.
They have been fielding requests since yesterday for the COVID-19 tool since it was announced that they will be part of thousands of sites across the country that will have them for purchase.
"The past 24 hours have been pretty busy for us," Auckland pharmacist Faheem Musa says.
Pharmacists are struggling to carry out their normal workload on top of constant calls.
"In terms of selling them to the general public, we don't have any idea when we can start to do that and we haven't been told when we can buy stock," pharmacist David Bullen says.
Meanwhile, people have been calling and demanding to be tested at Unichem Kelston Medical Centre Pharmacy in Auckland.
"People outside, wanting tests, demanding tests, pleading their cases," pharmacist Beheshta Ali says. "It's upsetting to hear their situations, also upsetting we are getting verbal abuse as a result of it."
Ali, who works at an Auckland pharmacy, says she's exhausted.
"People have been told to come to us, people have read to come to us, people have been turned away and unfortunately that's because these are people we aren't allowed to test," Ali says.
That's because of strict criteria in place.
At the moment pharmacies can only carry out supervised RATs for unvaccinated people with no COVID-19 symptoms who want to travel around the country or for entry into a court of law.
"We kind of had a bit of a peak over the new year and Waitangi period when people were travelling," Ali said. "Since then, we haven't had any of those. Our RATs have just been sitting there and we can't use them."
Pharmacist Faheem Musa has sourced RATs, but can only sell them to businesses.
"The first order we had that came in was sold within four hours," Musa says. "All the local businesses got in touch with us. They needed to have tests for their employees to deal with what's going on at the moment."
Over the past two days, 5.2 million kits have arrived and another 10 million are on the way.
The Government says they will be sent to community testing centres, GPs, pharmacies and businesses that need them as part of the Close Contact Exemption Scheme.
But some are stuck in limbo having no RATs at all.
"It remains unclear about whether or not we will provide them to the public free of charge as a distribution for the Ministry or whether we will sell them to the public on a longer-term basis," Bullen said.
This vital tool in our COVID-19 toolbox not yet freely available for purchase.
