The role of the community pharmacist in the COVID-19 crisis

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, causing the COVID-19 clinical situation, has led to a true health crisis. In this context, community pharmacists, just as other groups, have had to adapt and strengthen some of their functions to provide an effective answer to the population's health requirements. Despite the difficulties, community pharmacists have been in the frontline of the fight against the virus, adapting their facilities with security measures, handling all kinds of inquiries from the population and providing services that proved to be particularly helpful and necessary during the pandemic, like pharmaceutical home care by delivering medications and health products directly to the patients' home. The pharmacists have also worked with a collaborative spirit alongside other primary care professionals (doctors and nurses) in a line of work that must be kept in the future, well beyond the pandemic, to benefit the health of patients and the general population.