Rabies control activities during Covid 19 Pandemic in India

Covid 19 Pandemic which started during March 2020 in India, affected every aspect of life including prevention & control of most of the diseases. Rabies is a zoonotic disease & is 100% fatal; Indiais reporting highest number of animal exposures and human rabies deaths in the world. Rabies control activities both in human sector as well as animal sector suffereddue to complex nature of Covid pandemic and Government actions like restricted movement of population due to lockdown & curfew especially during 1st and 2nd wave.

As a result of lockdown & curfew, animal exposures reduced especially to stray dogs and wild animals including monkeys; paradoxically pet dog exposures increased. As most of the Government hospitals and private hospitals were busy in providing care to Covid patients, the patients with animal bites were made to run around for rabies PEP from on hospital to another hospitals. Many of Anti Rabies Clinics (ARC) where rabies post exposure prophylaxis are provided were either closed own or shifted to other places temporarily. Even, many private clinics were shut down or busy treating patients with covid symptoms. As a result, many animal bite cases did not receive rabies PEP, which may result in increased human rabies cases in coming days. Mass dog vaccination against rabies and dog population management (ABC-AR) activities conducted by animal welfare organizations with the help of local government agencies and pet vaccination conducted by private veterinarians was also affected during last 2 years resulting in increased number of animal rabies cases.

There was a dilemmas among physicians who were providing rabies post exposure prophylaxis during this covid pandemic, as there was no clear guidelines or advisory whether rabies immunobiologicals can be safely used in covid recovered or covid vaccinated individuals; or covid vaccines administered to person taking rabies post exposure prophylaxis. Realizing this, APCRI provided an advisory on providing rabies prophylaxis during covid pandemic and disseminated to all medical & veterinary professionals across the country www.apcri.in.

Now, life is slowly limping back to normal as pandemic is weaning supposedly due to good Covid vaccination coverage. Hope all rabies control activities envisaged under National Action Plan for Rabies Elimination (NAP-RE) and National Rabies Control Programme are carried out aggressively throughout the country to achieve Global goal of “Dog mediated human rabies free by 2030”.