All hands on deck: Forces use veterinary corps personnel at Coronavirus facilities

New Delhi: To augment medical care services to fight the brutal second COVID-19 wave, doctors and other staff from the Remount Veterinary Corps have been roped in by the armed forces, essentially to help run patient facilitation centres, officials said on Sunday.

Around 18 officers, over 120 junior commissioned officers (JCOs) and other ranks have been deployed in specially created COVID-19 facilities in the national capital, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Patna under operation 'CO-JEET', which was started by the combined armed forces in view of the pandemic.

'CO-JEET' stands for co-workers of all three services who will finally have 'Jeet' (victory) over COVID-19.

Operation 'Co-JEET' has engaged personnel of the three wings of the armed forces the Army, the Air Force and the Navy into services like helping restore oxygen supply chains, setting up COVID beds and providing help to the civilian administration in their fight to prevent the spread of the infection.

The Department of Defence has also created a COVID Crisis Management Committee.

The staff of the Remount Veterinary Corps (RVC) will be used to help facilitation centres to provide information to the kins of patients admitted to the make-shift (COVID) hospitals, the officials said.

Officers, JCOs and other ranks would be deployed at the COVID-19 care centres to help the over-stretched medical staff and provide timely information to anxious relatives and attendants of patients.

Relatives and attendants have been making a beeline outside these makeshift facilities to get information about their patients, and have often engaged with the staff deployed there for providing medical care to the infected.

The fresh deployment will lessen the burden on medical personnel, the officials said.

COVID-19 is zoonotic, and the pharmacology and biochemistry of veterinary sciences and the human body is totally the same, they said.

The Remount Veterinary Corps, which has a history of more than two centuries, among other things and besides veterinary services also takes care of disease diagnosis and investigation, and research in emerging diseases.

The RVC also works round-the clock for prevention of zoonotic diseases.

Zoonotic diseases or zoonoses are caused by germs that can spread between animals and people. They are caused viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi.