Sinan-gun Provides Support Staff to Assist Pharmacies with Mask Sales

Pharmacists Need to Focus on Dispensing and Medication Counseling

Scenic view of Sinan County Office building (Photo by Sinan County)

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Seo Young-seo] Sinan-gun, Jeollanam-do (Governor Park Woo-ryang) announced on the 7th that it plans to provide auxiliary personnel support from the 9th to 11 pharmacies in 7 towns and townships within the jurisdiction that sell masks.

As the public health crisis in the local community caused by COVID-19 continues and the demand for masks has surged, supply has not kept up with demand, causing ongoing inconvenience.

To improve this, the government secured public masks and supplied them through post offices, Nonghyup Hanaro Mart, and pharmacies, but this also led to long lines lasting several hours and criticisms regarding fairness in sales.

Accordingly, the government established a ‘Mask Duplicate Purchase Verification System’ and started selling two masks per person through pharmacies from the 6th, with plans to integrate operations with Nonghyup and post offices in the future.

In the case of pharmacies, since pharmacists are expected to perform their primary duties such as dispensing medicines and providing medication guidance while simultaneously verifying buyers’ identities and checking the duplicate purchase system and inputting sales for mask sales, confusion was anticipated. Therefore, Sinan-gun will support one auxiliary staff member per pharmacy to assist with mask sales.

Governor Park Woo-ryang said, “There have been problems such as duplicate sales, sales centered in town and township locations, excessive demand, close contact while lining up to purchase, and complaints due to early sell-outs.”

He added, “The newly attempted ‘Mask Duplicate Purchase Verification System’ is also expected to interfere with pharmacists’ dispensing and medication guidance, so we decided to support one staff member per pharmacy. We will ensure that masks are sold to residents in need in a more transparent and fair manner.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.