Veterinarian Response to Covid-19 Crisis
Author: Dr. Tarun Kumar, BVSc. & AH, MVSc(AGB).
Veterinary Surgeon at Govt. of Haryana
The year of 2020, when the entire world faced the hardship and time of hopelessness. People started working from home. Time was even more difficult for veterinarians, because just like medicos and other frontline workers, we have to step out of our homes to serve the least cared creatures of God. OIE in its statement in March 2020, declared veterinary services across the globe as an emergency service, as they not only look after the health of their clients, but also check the disease transmission and management, many of which can be zoonotic. Govt. of India on March 23, 2020 also declared veterinary services as essential services. Veterinarians are also integral for food safety as only we can check that only healthy animals enter the food chain.
At a time when everybody talked about the human health, fighting depression, spending time at home etc. etc., but we veterinarians talked about our pets and domestic animals. We thought about, how stray dogs and cattle will feed themselves. We need to step out of our homes without basic protective gears being provided to us. As pandemic hit the country and lockdown was imposed, veterinarians in some parts of Haryana also entrusted with responsibility to impose lockdown effectively. We, the veterinarians leading from the front, led the teams of Health department, civil administration and police personnel for effectively restricting the movement across state borders, screening of human population and managing the containment zones. A veterinarian inside us knew the sufferings of stray animals cause by lockdown. We tried our level best to arrange food for these helpless. We helped lot of milk vendors to get the permit to supply their milk in cities. we knew the hardship of poultry and dairy farmers in raising the animals without concentrate feed available in the market. Movement of raw material and selling of animal produce was the bigger challenge which was slowly overcome. During this hard time a veterinarian inside us never slept. We were always ready to offer our services at farmer’s doorstep. FMD and HS vaccination drive was the biggest challenge as it needed door to door visit of vaccination teams which was highly feared at that time. At time when whole world was praying for a Covid vaccine, we veterinarians inoculated millions of animals against FMD and HS that too fearlessly, with full sense of responsibility and at farmer’s doorstep.
Veterinarians shared the bigger responsibility regards to Covid pandemic in consonance with the other sections of society, that too without being recognized as corona warriors. We played a great role in many aspects of the disease management, be it testing, finding a cure vaccine development and one more untouched facet is ‘Panic management’. Vets played a crucial role in educating common people that SARS-CoV-2 virus does not cause illness in animals, so there is no need to panic in handling of animals. We taught people about spread of Covid-19 that animals can’t transmit virus to human, so there is no need to abandon your pets. Although some dogs and cats and in New York zoo, a lion was also found positive for Covid-19, but these were human to animal transmission. Infection to humans from animals is still not confirmed.
On another front of testing and cure, Veterinary institutes across the world, having past experience of tackling the corona viruses of animals or human origin, demonstrated with their extensive research and vast experience that anti-viral treatment is a potential hope. At College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, where a group of researchers have done extensive research on MERS, also investigated SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. Other global Universities like Louisiana State University and University of California also did their part. Veterinarians showed the world that a very common antiparasitic drug like Ivermectin also has potential to stop virus from replicating. On testing front veterinarians and veterinary institutes like NRCE were pushed into task of RT-PCR.
We veterinarians told the world that, Corona viruses are not new to the world, nor the vaccine against them is a distant thought. Besides SARS and MERS, several corona viruses affect poultry (Infectious Bronchitis virus) and Pigs (Porcine Respiratory Corona Virus). We veterinarians are using vaccine against IBV since 2013. At a time when vaccine against Covid is out and everyone around there have their own doubts and misconceptions, we veterinarians can help people to understand the pros and cons of vaccination. As we veterinarians do vaccination on herd/population level twice every year, we can easily correlate this vaccination drive with FMDCP because it is also herd/population level. But on the other hand we also understand that vaccine is not a light switch that will magically turn off the pandemic. It is a useful tool that everyone should take advantage of.
Veterinarian played their part on every facet to contain the pandemic but nowhere in the world are we included in the priority group for vaccination. Some states in US have authorized veterinarians along with dentists for administration of Covid-19 vaccine, but even in US veterinarians are not prioritized to take vaccine. It should be the responsibility of every state and central government to take care of those whose took care of speechless, atleast allowing vaccination for vets at par with front line workers.
