Los Angeles Times

COVID-19 test at the pharmacy

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Re “More COVID-19 testing, now,” editorial, July 26

Speaking as a professor of pharmacy law and ethics, I believe the lack of access and long turnaround times for COVID-19 testing can be addressed in part by permitting pharmacist­s to collect specimens from patients and

process these on “point of care” devices that can report results in minutes.

Pharmacist­s are the most accessible healthcare providers, but current laws and regulation­s preclude pharmacist­s from performing such tests. Both the California Society of Health System Pharmacist­s and the California Pharmacist­s Assn. have been working with state legislator­s and regulators to permit pharmacist­s to perform not only COVID-19 tests, but tests for influenza and strep throat as well.

The other issue is payment: Currently there is no compensati­on for pharmacist­s who perform such services from third-party insurance as well as Medicare and Medicaid, which is perhaps what’s preventing patients from receiving rapid testing by a healthcare profession­al.

Robert L. Stein

Irvine The writer is a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute’s School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

This is putting the cart before the horse. Until we have an assertive message from all sections of society that COVID-19 is the clear and present danger to all of us, testing and contact tracing are futile.

President Trump has to speak and behave so that he consistent­ly communicat­es to Republican officials and his 60 million-plus supporters that the coronaviru­s is a silent assassin putting our country at risk. Comments about how the virus will disappear have to end, now.

Germany, Thailand, Italy, Taiwan and South Korea have not and do not aspire to test 10% of their population­s weekly, as this editorial suggests be done in the United States, yet they have all been successful at exerting significan­t control over their national epidemics. Their commonalit­y is the universal message that COVID-19 must be controlled.

Without that message, we will continue to be pushing the cart, now and into the future.

Mark Tracy

Carlsbad, Calif.

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