The Pharmacy Guild of Australia says it will move quickly to implement a real-time monitoring system for over the counter codeine sales following an announcement by the Department of Health to defer a final decision on rescheduling OTC codeine to prescription-only.

Last month, the Department of Health's medicines scheduling delegate made an interim decision to support a proposal to re-schedule combination analgesics and cold and flu remedies from Schedules 2 and 3 (pharmacy and pharmacist-only) to Schedule 4 (prescription-only).