Queens pharmacists fight the coronavirus from the ‘front lines of the drugstore’
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Patients wait outside of an urgent care pharmacy in Corona on March 25. AP Photo/John Minchillo
By Victoria Merlino
When a customer called Maspeth pharmacist Trevor Latchminarain and asked him to bring her prescription out to her car, he wasn’t sure what her illness was. But he suited up in personal protective equipment to be safe.
It wasn’t until Latchminarain handed the customer the bag with the medicine that she warned him that she had COVID-19.
“When she told me she tested positive, I was a little freaked out, I’m not going to lie,” he said.
Latchminarain said he ripped off his gloves in the parking lot after handing off the medication.
That kind of fear and uncertainty is now common among pharmacists across Queens, who are tasked with serving sick and nervous customers while contending with their own concerns about contracting the coronavirus. The illness has ground much of the city to a standstill, but pharmacists still show up to work every day, fulfilling a vital function during an unprecedented public health crisis.
In Queens, which accounts for more than a third of the city’s almost 50,000 COVID-19 cases, the pressure for pharmacists is even greater.
Latchminarain, the lone pharmacist at Grand Care Pharmacy, said that he now keeps the pharmacy open seven days a week to meet the demand.
“I want to give people the opportunity to talk to someone,” he said, adding that he sees himself and the pharmacy as a resource for people who have concerns about the virus.
Latchminarain advises customers who may be afraid of contracting the coronavirus to stay home.
“It’s kind of like, ‘What are you doing? You were told to stay home,’” Latchminarain said, noting that sometimes he sees the same customers frequenting his store multiple times in the same week, looking for items that could have been purchased in one trip. “You have people coming out still sneezing and coughing and not wearing gloves,” he said.
Several of Latchminarain’s patients have tested positive for the coronavirus. When they do, he tells them not to come into the store and instead offers to run outside and hand them the prescriptions or deliver the medication to their homes. Prescription delivery is a service Latchminarain offered before the current COVID-19 crisis began, he said.
Personal protective equipment, such as gloves and masks, and disinfectants are getting harder to come by, but Latchminarain said he managed to provide the items for people and restaurants in the neighborhood.
“Unfortunately some of the prices are higher than they used to be,” he said of the cost of the supplies. Other retailers in Queens have reported wholesalers and distributors gouging the price for in-demand items, like hand sanitizer.
New York City Pharmacists Society Chairperson Parthiv Shah called the current climate for pharmacists “extremely hard.”
“Right now a lot of employees are getting sick on the front lines of the drugstore,” Shah said.
Shah, who owns pharmacies throughout New York, including in Queens, said that one of the first things he did to help guard against the virus was to shut down non-essential drugstore services, like lottery ticket machines, notary services, eye tests for driver’s licenses and money orders.
“Turn off the lotto machine. I don’t want anyone to come into my store and play the lotto machine,” he said he told his staff. “We just got to focus on our core, core business.”
Pharmacists are doing what they can to keep customers and themselves healthy, but they are “shooting from the hip,” according to Shah.
“There’s really no guidelines that have been given out in regards with what to do for pharmacy owners,” he said.
Shah and the New York City Pharmacists Society have spoken with members and given guidance on what pharmacists can do to keep stores running smoothly during the pandemic . Some of their suggestions include asking staff to wear protective equipment, reducing store hours, offering prescription delivery and curbside pick-up and physically limiting the number of customers in a store at one time. Some members have also made their staff take their temperatures or oxygen saturation level before each shift.
“We are risking ourselves,” Shah said. “But we know we have this responsibility.”
