Spades and Spades and Doberman.
Veterinarians could contribute to the Covid-19 vaccination effort and thus speed up the process, while nearly six million French people are immune at this stage.
This is what Loïc Dombreval, deputy (LREM) and former veterinarian, proposes in an open letter to the Ministry of Health.
“This proposal is anything but far-fetched, insists the elected representative of the Alpes-Maritimes.
Veterinarians are health personnel, certainly in animal health, but we have to get out of this idea that we do not want to be treated like a dog.
“For now, the time is rather to the discontent of general practitioners, deprived this week of their AstraZeneca doses for the benefit of pharmacists.
"It seems that we are going to see a massive arrival of vaccines and it will be necessary to mobilize a maximum of professionals", insists Loïc Dombreval.
4637 volunteers
Last year, at the request of the Ministry of Agriculture, the French Veterinary Academy called on the 17,000 professionals in the branch.
4,637 students, active veterinarians or young retirees had volunteered to join the health reserve.
Having this data, the regional health agencies had never followed up.
"Problem, veterinarians are service professionals and not health, they are therefore not authorized," explains Jean-Luc Angot, president of the Veterinary Academy of France.
But given the situation, we could quickly change the texts, as we did to allow PCR tests in our laboratories.
Argentina, Quebec and some American states have already taken the plunge.
"Veterinarians vaccinate 9 million dogs and cats per year, 6.5 million cattle ... In total, 42 million animals receive an injection each year", argues Loïc Dombreval.
Immunizing even the most reluctant human being will seem easy to animal care specialists.
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"If the offer of service from animal health professionals was not accepted, it would be a sad categorical blockage", judges the deputy, who has already fought to bring in a spawn of animal health research within the Council scientist.
“With Covid-19, we are just starting to rethink human and animal health together,” he continues.
And you have to get used to it: pandemics from the animal world are still likely to occur.
Look at Russia, it has just declared transmissions to humans of H5N8 bird flu… ”