Discussion:
This study revealed that more than half of the pharmacists (51.1%) have good knowledge about COVID-19 pandemic especially concerning methods of transmission, incubation period, prevention methods and risk of severe illness.
And this type of knowledge is very important as suspected patients and co-patients may reach pharmacists in community pharmacy asking for over the counter medications to relief their symptoms before they seek medical attention, when they get worse, so it is so important that the pharmacists must have the knowledge so as to council those patients, more over this good know edge may help pharmacists to protect themselves from getting infected.
Nevertheless their knowledge about treatment guidelines should be better, for example more than 67% of participants, and more than 24% think that Azithromycin and oxygen respectively is used in the national protocol for treatment of mild cases, while in fact they are not.
Also more than 75% of pharmacists think that hydroxychloroquine is used for treatment moderate cases, while according to the Sudan national protocol it is used for the treatment of severe cases.
Although the Sudan national treatment protocol for COVID-19 is available in the Federal Ministry of Health website (21) but it is not widely distributed in the media so pharmacists do not have the sufficient knowledge about this protocol.
Regarding contribution, the majority of participants provide different types of information e.g: information about diseases symptoms (93.1%), transmission information (94%), and prevention information (91.1%).
Different initiatives were acting in Sudan during this pandemic; pharmacists play many roles in these initiatives e.g.: synthesizing or distributing sanitizers (75%), also 76.7% of pharmacists participate in community awareness programs.
More than half of pharmacists participate in referral of suspected patients, developing protocols, research efforts, preparing medication stocks.
The study revealed that work experience and level of education significantly (P<0.05) influence pharmacists knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic.