The health authorities are urging people sick with swine flu to stay at home rather than going themselves to pick up the antivirals from government pharmacies or health centres.
Instead, they should send a relative to pick up their medication so as not to infect other people with the influenza that is causing a global pandemic.
From today, private family doctors will be able to prescribe the antiviral Tamiflu to vulnerable people with flu-like symptoms and those who start showing complications. The antivirals can be picked up from government pharmacies or health centres when the pharmacies are closed and also from the pharmacy at the Gozo Hospital.
This arrangement has raised concerns that people with influenza could transmit the virus to other patients queuing to pick up their medicines or even to the pharmacists dispensing the medicines.
Answering questions by The Times, a spokesman for the Community Care Parliamentary Secretariat said people who were sick should "strictly" stay at home and let their relatives pick up antivirals for them.
"Any other person queuing for other medicines can be a carrier. Asymptomatic patients are running around in the community without them being aware.
"Hence, the risks from relatives picking up medicines is not bigger than that of any other person running around in the community," the spokesman said.
The authorities said they did not intend to install Perspex barriers to protect pharmacists and there would not be a separate waiting area for people who need to pick up antivirals.
Tamiflu will be given to pregnant women, children under five years of age and those with chronic diseases of the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys or diabetes.
Healthy people who are showing signs of complications will also be given the drugs.
Tamiflu may be collected from the Birkirkara, Paola, Mosta, Cospicua, Floriana, Qormi, Luqa and Gżira government phar-macies, Mount Carmel and Karen Grech hospitals, the Rabat, Cospicua, Qormi, Paola, Mosta, Floriana and Gżira health centres and from the General Hospital in Gozo.